Locked In

Fiction: Three guardsmen fight a vicious war in the Columbia River Valley.

“I’m fucking locked in, bro.” I pop a Zyn. My shits are solid. The dawn burns gold from our side, the high desert east, and God is good.

“Of course you’re fucking locked in, bro,” Jensen cackles. He’s got this indefatigable light in his eyes, like his blood’s part coke, and even scratching the gore from his nails he’s grinning and grinning and grinning. “Two TOWs bagged, six commies in hell, we’ll have 84 cleared for armor by Easter. Inshallah.”

He’s not Muslim. I don’t even know if he’s Catholic. He’s one of those kids who mainlined neo-trad content from ten years old, the teacher-bashing wave of ultra-returnists who form the late-teens backbone of the Idaho Militia. He’s ‘awakened,’ he laughs, if you press him on his faith. Everything’s a laugh to Private Garth Jensen—the spring air, the fifty-pound ruck, the stream of commie blood as we waste each embedded rocket team. We’re getting good at it now, and it’s Jensen our trio has to thank.

Homelander returns from taking a piss, looking ragged. Our CO, real name Captain Eric Schriefer, looks nothing like his superhero namesake, but Jensen caught him chugging milk one time and the moniker stuck. He spits, with enough of a scowl to fight the devil, and I hand him a Zyn pouch. I already know what’s got him pissed on this fine May morning.

“When we’re back at the Columbia, sir,” I say. “Then you can smoke a whole pack full.”

It’s the embers. Salem was beyond clear on this. After a wet winter of trenches and mud, the trees and grasses of Northern Oregon are all grown up and liable to burn like perdition. We can’t risk fucking our own advance while we push through the mountains for I-5.

Homelander knows. He settles for the Cool Mint nic pouch and turns to gaze at the ancient stone of the west. To my eyes, his gray-flecked face looks ancient, half from twenty years in the Idaho Guard and half from two more on the front of this dumbass war. “Sixty miles as the crow flies, Duag,” he says. “One day’s drive for the armor once 84’s clear. Take Beaverton. Pinch off Portland’s supply. Get Kersh out and put all this shameful business behind us.”

I’m Duag. Jim Duag. Idaho Militia Penal Brigade, on loan from Texas, as my striped fatigue patches announce to the whole coalition. It was a bar fight in Fort Worth, since I know you wanted to know. Got in past my head, piss drunk, and didn’t realize quite what a solid steel pipe can do to a man’s brain stem. It’s a stupid shame too. We could have been friends. I think that’s how Homelander feels about us and the Portlander commies.

Jensen’s got his ruck packed, and mine. I swear the kid’s a machine. We grease up gray-and-green, scrubland camo, and Jensen does his usual Jolson routine as he’s putting it on. Homelander doesn’t even chuckle. We’re running M4A1s, standard kit out of Gowen, dressed in Gulf-era woodland fatigues that smell like motor oil. All three of us have beards from a week in country, Jensen’s the lightest and mine about in the middle. We’re all just starting to smell.

Homelander maps out the course, due west. The dawn makes the lowlands look like heaven. I’m from Texas ranch folk three generations back, and before they pressed me into the Guard I didn’t know light could shine so soft, so divine as in Oregon. “Eight mile stalk,” the captain announces, “we reach Hood River by dark.”

We all know the drill. No chit-chat. Scan the trees and stay on the captain and pounce on Charlie’s rocket teams before he sees us coming. Charlie. My grandad fought Charlie in the muck of the Yellow East so I wouldn’t have to. Now here Charlie is, possessing the souls of these fucked up sons of bitches who spat on their own Stars and Stripes.

I give a nod to grandad up above as I spot a sign. ‘Interstate 84. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway. Hood River, 10 mi. Cascade Locks, 29 mi. Beaverton, 80 mi.’

“We’re too close to 84,” Homelander decides. We cut south, through scrubby ponderosa pine, and hit the decrepit remnants of the old Route 30, east-west. No enemy TOW teams yet. We stop to eat. Then we see the grim valley ahead. From here west, forest lowland turns into Kansas-type terrain, wide open plains with a few white oaks and hardly a ditch for concealment. It’s the same bullshit we slogged through all last winter, pushing to the mountains. Great for riding, awful for stalking. Nevertheless, we push on, exposed.

I can see the gleaming Columbia running beside us, just to the north, my right. At The Dalles, the nearest FOB, you can stand on the banks and see those motherfucker fed troops with their dicks in hand on the northern side. “Don’t antagonize them, they’re keeping Washington neutral,” my old CO would warn. Still, more than once we’d all get drunk and scream a phonebook of insults at the good-for-nothing National Guard. Aren’t you supposed to be the ones protecting the nation?

“If I get Kersh’s fat ass he’s gonna be squealing,” says Jensen. One small benefit to open county is that Homelander lets us talk. All the while I’m scanning the north for the green of launcher tubes.

“If you get him, he goes to trial,” Homelander grunts back.

“Cody Cloyd at Madras said if we take him alive we legitimize ‘em,” I chime in. “Even worse, the feds could take him ‘fore trial. He’d just keep running his mouth about being the real governor. Cody Cloyd said better to just get him in the neck like he got caught up in a firefight.”

“Only if he’s fighting back,” said Homelander.

“Well, it’s not what I said,” I mumble. “Cody Cloyd said.”

“It’s not gonna be any goddamned Penal Brigade dickwad, anyway, Duag,” Jensen laughs almost musically. “So you don’t have to think about it. They’re gonna park us on I-5 blocking truckers from Washington and let the Oregon Guard do the pounding through to Portland City Hall.”

Homelander pauses, stock-still. “Hear that?” he says. I don’t hear anything. Too many five-buck-cover rock shows have fried my inner ears. Then Jensen grabs me by the scruff of my fatigues and yanks my ass down onto the grassland dirt beside him. That’s when I catch its sound—the FPV.

I hate these things. I hate them more than Satan, almost. Charlie copied the design from Ukrainian troops, and for the past two years they’ve been picking us apart like big mosquitoes. They’re quadcopter drones, off the shelf like you’d get from Best Buy almost, twenty pounds or so. There’s different sizes. FPV means some bitch boy with VR strapped to his face is running the controls, first-person view. Used to be the operator was a few miles out in a cave, doing radio control, but since they nationalized Starlink and let Charlie use it the operators hole up all the way far as the coast.

It’s a dishonor what they do, killing while hiding, no skin in the game. When we win, we’re gonna flip a coin for each pilot right in front of their noses, all in a line, and the losers we’ll blow their faces right off just like they’ve been blowing off ours. After that, the winning half’ll walk away knowing the fear of being in the shit, being scared for your life when it’s out of your hands. After that, the living half can say they served. That’s my pitch to command.

I hear the buzzing of the big fat bug weighed down by its suicide explosive. It’s not heading straight for us, which means we’re safe for now. Once they see a target they come in like a bat out of hell. To my right, Jensen is loading El Chode, his sawed-off double barrel that he bought from some machinist north of Bend. “Skeet, skeet,” he says to me as he aims it, still smiling. The FPVs can’t hear, we’ve figured out.

El Chode won’t do a lick until the buzzer is fifty feet or closer, and Jensen knows it. Still, Homelander puts a calm hand out to warn the kid not to open fire. He’s flat on the dirt beside us, carbine ready. The sound fades as the devil bug moves on.

“Five mile range on those DJIs,” says Homelander, not yet rising. “Less with payload. Whoever launched it must be close.”

We wait twenty minutes, listening to the wind and watching black ants crawl on our arms. The ants here aren’t anywhere as bad as Texas. They’re tiny, and they barely even bite. When Homelander rises, we fall in behind him, and from the look in his eyes I can tell he’s got a clue where the drone launch position might be. He’s good at sniffing them out, even when they try to loop around long ways to throw us off. It’s like he knows how they think.

At a barely-paved road, by a torn-up ranch fence, we come upon remains of a camp. “Three days cold,” Homelander tells us, going off I-don’t-know-what. There’s the usual enemy litter—Coke cans, a bury-pit for waste, and holes where tent poles were planted. Then Jensen drops to one knee and lets out a shocked guffaw.

“Ho-lee shit,” he says, picking up a sealed black pouch about the size of a lunch bag. “Chinese MREs. We got fuckin’ Chinese communists on American soil.”

He shows it to me, his prize, his joy. “They could have just bought it on Alibaba,” I tell him.

Homeland taps his finger on the seal printed on the center. “PLA insignia,” he says, looking it over. Then he takes it from the kid for closer inspection. “Army materiel.”

“What’s it say?” Jensen asks.

“Beats me,” says the captain. Then he tears the seal open and smells it. It smells good. We all huddle in, watching, as he pulls out individual pouches of something like pork, some kind of eggs, some kind of radish, chili sauce. It seems more like a TV dinner than an MRE, and it even has one of those self-heating cook things inside.

The captain can see us moving in like dogs, mouths watering. He tosses the whole deal in the shit pit and kicks it covered. “Could be spiked,” he says. “Too suspicious they left it like that. Mithridates killed a thousand Roman soldiers on his retreat from the Black Sea, leaving poison rations behind.”

I don’t know who the fuck that is, and I’m pissed as hell at Homelander for wasting a perfectly good bag of dog foo young over nerd bullshit, but I’m too on the level to tweak out on a CO for something as small as rations. Those days are behind me. Like I said, I’m locked in. I can see on Jensen’s face he’s feeling the same.

The sun is high by now, but the wind keeps it cool. We’re making bad time. The FPV is a good enough excuse, if Boise asks. No point double-timing if we all get fragged. Following a trail, we hit Route 30 again, the two-lane highway they built south of the Columbia before I-84 was added right along the bank. Sweaty from the climb, we take a breath at a concrete sign for the Memaloose Overlook—and I throw up a fist for both of the guys to freeze.

With gestures, I signal, guiding their eyes. ‘Rocket team, camped out a hundred feet north and fifty feet below us on the hill face. Three hostiles, backs to us, set up to hit I-84. We have the drop.’

I barely breathe, not because I’m scared but because I’m so tied up in thought. This is the closest I’ve ever been to Charlie without being in a firefight. I see three National Guard helmets, all spraypaint-stenciled ‘FO.’ Free Oregon. The helmets anonymize their features from our high ground position. They wear fatigues, but no body armor. In their position they’ve got sandbags, a radio, and a rocket launcher set up on a mobile tripod, aimed at the interstate. I see no signs of a drone launch kit.

“Javelin,” Jensen whispers, pointing at the launcher. “Not TOW.”

He’s right, it almost does look like a Javelin, the far-deadlier third-gen descendant of the TOW tubes we’ve been killing since we set out. Something’s off about it, though, and I can’t tell what. With his eyes, Homelander tells Jensen to shut the fuck up. Then he makes a bowling motion, and I get his drift. Their curved sandbag wall looks like the perfect backstop for a softly-tossed grenade.

I’m grenade guy. Penal gets the heaviest pack. I kneel so Schriefer can pull it out, our last one from the four we started out with. He makes sure we’re ready, fingers on our triggers. Then he pulls the pin and arcs it like a softball down the hill.

It lands where it’s supposed to. “Grenade!” A young man’s voice. They have time for half a dive away, which isn’t enough. We cover as it blows, really fucking loud in your chest and in your heart. Then we mag dump.

By the time our shots run out no one’s shooting back or screaming. It’s too easy. They’re like babies. “Advance,” says Homelander. We do a stupid shuffle down the steep hill, keeping our balance, kicking up clods. The whole time I’m looking for a fourth or fifth man who might have been off taking a leak when the shit went down. The three in the dugout are toast, but we still need to check them.

I kick the first body I get to. No need for security shots, since half his head is gone. Blood and guts shine so much brighter in the sun than you ever see in a movie. We’re in so fast, the flies haven’t even found the scent. The guy is old, forties like Homelander, hair in the typical Oregon dirty brown. He’s got that fucking bullshit patch on his shoulder with the squaw throwing a fist up. Resist. Resist what? You’re the traitors.

No rank insignia. Homelander kneels with me, going through his pockets. Then Jensen calls out from over by the rocket battery. “What the fuck is a Red Arrow?”

“Hongjian-12,” says Homelander, joining him at the emplacement. “Chinese Javelin knockoff.”

I leave the first body and move to the second, this one with guts spilled out on the deck. “So clean you could serve Santa’s cookies off this bitch,” says Jensen, inspecting the launcher. “Honest to God it’s a Chinese invasion.”

As he says it I flip the second corpse over. It’s small, light to manipulate, and as I feel the shape of the pelvis I already know what I’m getting into. The corpse is a woman, mid-twenties, some kind of flat-faced Asian. There’s dirt in her dead, staring eyes. I brush it away.

A shot rings out and Jensen screams. It’s rage more than pain. I jolt up and see the third downed hostile gripping a pistol, aimed at the kid. With a placekicker’s force, Jensen knocks the weapon across the dugout with his boot tip, bleeding from his arm. It’s just a graze. Jensen roars again, nicced out and ablaze. He kicks the guy in the chin.

Charlie falls back and does not rise, groaning, blood streaming from his ears. He stares up at the wisps of clouds in the sky. “WHY THE FUCK DID YOU NOT SECURITY TAP?” screams Homelander, who never curses or yells.

Jensen clutches his wounded arm, seething. “Duag was supposed to—”

“Don’t Duag me!” Homelander assesses the arm while he screams. I’ve never seen him like this. “Duag, you got the other two?”

“Yes, sir. Dead.” I’m glad I’m not Jensen. As I watch this go down I see the third Charlie squirming and I train my carbine on his head. Jensen’s boot’s on his chest.

Private Jensen’s hurt in two ways, flesh and pride. I’ve seen the look in his eyes in other men. He needs an outlet, and Charlie will do. “You think you can shoot me in the back, you commie faggot?” he asks, stepping harder. There is no poetry, no battle hymn, to Private Garth Jensen’s brother war. If there is, it’s mostly slurs.

The guy on the ground looks a little darker than most, maybe Italian, I don’t know. Tall, and heavy by war standards, even if he’d be lean next to the average Whataburger patron. He says nothing. He looks scared.

Jensen looks over at me. Homelander’s staying quiet, so I do the same. In moments of uncertainty I am but a vessel for my captain. Then Jensen’s eyes go to the second corpse. “Is that a goddamn female chink? A chink-ess?”

I nod, although her nationality is unclear. “Is that your handler?” Jensen goes on. “Is that all it takes for you to betray your country?”

“She’s Korean-American,” Charlie croaks. “Is she dead?”

“Excuse me, zip-ess,” says Jensen, ignoring the question. Every stressed word is punctuated by a jab of his M4 barrel in the direction of the fallen man’s neck.

The wind goes still. I get a feeling in my gut, low and faint, like we need to get moving. Homelander stays in place, and so do I. “We should have nuked the zips and chicoms back in ‘50,” Jensen rants on. “Now their cancer is here, it’s in you, look at you, sending your women out to fight and die in the dirt. Gorillas don’t even do that.”

The kid from Idaho pauses. He sees glass glinting in the light, a foot from the man. I recognize its shape and bulk as a satellite-augmented iPhone, one of the ones Apple made for Charlie with the Rose City etching back when we started our push.

“Look, he’s got the soy phone,” says Jensen, holding it up to the man for Face ID before he can shut his eyes. “Maybe I should be a traitor too, so I can get free shit from powers that be.” He holds the side button. “Siri, redial last FaceTime.”

The phone rings with a sound that takes me back to three years ago in Austin. I used to hear it when I’d call my girl, waiting and waiting for her to finally pick up and answer. She rarely did. Now, it rings twice, and with a sound of connection a gray-haired woman in a garden comes on screen.

“Lewis?” She’s confused.

“I got your son here, ma’am, and he’s gonna die.” Jensen points the camera at the fallen rocket operator.

“Oh, my God,” she says, breathless. “Rick, come here.”

I can’t watch this. I feel sick. “Jensen, enough,” I hear Captain Schriefer say as I find myself turning away.

Whatever the parents on the other end are saying is drowned out by Jensen’s shouts at the fallen man. “Fast death is if you tell me where that fucking FPV nest is!” he says, with a stomp. “Slow is if you go and try anything else!”

The FPV. We’re beyond exposed on this hillside. Under the clamor, I don’t hear the horrific buzz until it’s on top of us. Four rotors, white plastic shell, a camera like a monster’s eye. Plastic explosive hangs from its belly like an egg sac as it dives, dives—

It blows a couple feet behind Homelander, and he falls to the ground and he’s screaming and screaming and screaming. Unspecified gore leaks out from the tears of his fatigues, below the ribcage.

It’s like it’s not real. Is it just a dream? No. It’s happened. Homelander’s hit. It’s not the way I thought a man like Eric Schriefer would face the end. I’ve never seen a man so scared and desperate, like a child.

Jensen stares at Captain Schriefer, his foot off Charlie, deep in shock. It’s the look on Charlie’s face that pulls me to reality. “The River,” I say to the fallen man, low enough for Jensen not to notice, and I don’t put a round in Charlie’s back as he scrambles down the hill toward I-84. I try to imagine him back with his parents, then Schriefer screams again and it’s all me and Jensen can do to get to his side.

“Can you walk, sir?” I ask, pointlessly. All I can think of is how he’ll never get his last smoke.

He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at Jensen. Jensen raises his carbine, and with an unreadable moment between them the private pulls the trigger. The captain falls silent and still.

“You fragged the fucking captain?”

“He was asking me,” says Jensen, “with his eyes.” Looking down, Jensen picks up Charlie’s iPhone again. The FaceTime has disconnected. “It’s what I would want, if an FPV got me. Suicide’s a sin.”

He goes into the settings and turns off the Face ID lock. Then he pockets the phone like a bandit and turns back to the dirt by the rocket site. He’s no longer hot with anger but stone cold. I feel like a different species from whoever could be what he is. “Where’s Charlie?” he asks.

“Must have split,” I say, watching Jensen. “Probably back west toward Beaverton.”

“We’ll find him if we stalk fast,” the kid says. He’s muttering something, maybe a prayer, over the corpse of our CO.

I swallow. Will we really press on? It’s his command, now, technically, even as a private. Penal enlisted always fall last in chain of command. I watch as Jensen pulls the map and orders and dog tags from the corpse of the captain. He spikes the Chinese Javelin, leaves a marker for our boys, and takes the mags and water from Schriefer’s pack. Then, somehow, we advance.

It feels like the end. The wind is stale and warm. The grassland suggests neither heaven nor hell but some unending purgatory. Is that all I deserve? Is it more than I deserve?

As we stalk Charlie the FPV pilot stalks us. I have no proof, but I can feel it in my bones, a second drone run by the very same operator, coming to finish the work of the first. I start to imagine the pilot, my enemy, my brother. How old is he? Nineteen? Someone told me once the reflexes peak around then, for professional gamers and for FPV and the like. Am I just a pawn in a video game to him? Would he show me any of the mercy I showed his comrade? Would the comrade, for that matter, if we crossed paths on Route 30 again?

Jensen’s a good orienteer, and we make good time. I didn't realize how much Schriefer’s older legs were slowing us down. Going off the map, Jensen decides the State Road bridge over Mosier Creek is too much of a choke point. He takes a gamble that the creek is low enough to cross on foot, and it turns out right. In the gully of the creek, surrounded on both sides by the cover of craggy stone, we stop to rest.

“I wasn’t going to torture him,” Jensen says to me, eating another POS expired MRE out of Gowen. I know we’re both still thinking about the Chinese rations back near Memaloose.

“You were already torturing him,” I say back, “and his parents.”

Jensen stares at me a long while. “There’s a town just up out of this gully,” he says. “If we weren’t stalking dark we could go in. Get a bite at the diner. Get some blueberry pancakes. Some coffee. Talk to the waitress a little, maybe see if she likes our style. It’d be fun, Duag. Like a little road trip. But we can’t go in there, because Charlie might be in there, drinking their coffee, eating their blueberry pancakes, probably holding ‘em all at gunpoint. And we’re out here eating piece of shit moldy yellow squares. ‘Cause he wants to take everything, not just from us, from everyone. I had old ladies coming up to me, crying, saying thank you for saving freedom, when we took Redmond. I’m no Oregon man. No judge sent me here, Duag. But I’m still here fighting to save the rest of ‘em.”

I say nothing, but he can see on my face he got through. I wonder if there actually is a poet buried in Private Garth Jensen. Then he compulsively opens Charlie’s iPhone, and I remember his age. “Pull the sat card out,” I say, and I wish that I had said it back at the rocket site. “Just in case.”

He does. Then he goes through the Notes app, the camera roll, the messages. If he’s moved by the humanity of it all, his eyes don’t show it. Then he beckons me over. “Look at this,” he says, deep in the recently saved files.

ELBAKYAN_PATTERN.mkv 3/6/35 68.3 MB

He hits play and I realize what he’s done and I swipe to close the player. “Do you know what the fuck that is?” I ask him.

“It’s a light pattern—”

“That kills you!”

“That’s not real,” Jensen laughs, stopping short of opening it again.

“You find out on your own time,” I say, “not when you’re on mission with me.”

“Why would he keep that on his phone?” Jensen asks. I can’t tell if he’s truly spooked or just hamming it up, but he hands the phone to me as he says it. I pocket it for safe keeping.

“Same reason you want to get fragged if an FPV nails you.”

The kid checks his shotgun shells and re-packs his bag. “Digital cyanide,” he says. “That’s cracked.”

We skirt the town of Mosier and whatever blueberry pancakes it might possess. I walk in Jensen’s footsteps, lashing myself over why I’m not feeling whatever it is I’m supposed to be feeling. I’m supposed to love him as a comrade, or hate him for his cruelty. I feel neither. I don’t miss Homelander, or mourn him, or think back with fondness on moments we shared in the field. All I feel is fear of the FPV.

We’re not making it to Hood River by dark. The sun is low, turning a vicious orange as it sinks toward the enemy’s land. God feels far in this moment. Evil feels close. We cross Rock Creek at an unstable point, and I soak myself up to the knees as stones slip beneath me. At least the air’s still hot. The more tired I get, the more Jensen’s indefatigable zeal seems alien, almost inhuman. Weird shadows grow from his dimples each time he looks back to check on my dragging feet.

The terrain gets too rough to go off road, and we stick to a paved trail. Mountain runs steep up on the south side, and steep down toward I-84 to the north. We go a mile like this in silence. Then we see what lies against the cliff face.

The semicircle void. The tunnel mouth.

“Let’s climb around it,” I say.

Jensen lets his rifle arm fall slack. He surveys the gargantuan emptiness of the mountain landscape. “No time,” he says. “Got to make Hood River.”

“There’s no way we make Hood by dark,” I say back. “Orders are stop at dark.”

“I know the orders,” says Jensen. “We can’t make camp on this trail. So we push through the tunnel and we stop in the brush on the far side. It opens up.”

That’s when I hear it. The bug. The disgusting vampire bat strapped heavy with Semtex, coming for the kill. It’s not in the air at all, no dive bombing down from the trees. It was waiting, running silent, on the tunnel floor in darkness.

“FPV!” Jensen bellows, and in that moment I realize he’s scared, too. He’s been scared this whole time. The white drone rises out of the tunnel fifty feet ahead, maxing its rotors. The kid swings his backpack to his chest and pulls out El Chode.

I’m blasting with my M4, but it’s no use. Not once in two years has anyone been documented downing an FPV with a carbine. The first barrel of Jensen’s shotgun goes off, loud and sharp. It looks like a straight shot, but the drone keeps coming. Second barrel blows. No effect. My mag is dry and I’m ready to run, and in that moment I’m thinking of some words Cody Cloyd said in Redmond.

“You don’t need to be faster than the FPV. You just need to be faster than the bastard next to you.”

Then Garth Jensen turns his carbine on himself and blows his head off. The body crumples limp to the ground, like any dead Charlie. The FPV and I both watch him fall with surprise. Then we turn to each other. Bastard Jensen. You goddamned son of a whore. You killed me.

I can feel the pilot in his cubicle laughing. I can feel his beady little eyes inside the headset, seventy miles away, tracking my movements. I brace like a matador. No time to reload. He’s coming for me now. His rotors whine. Once he’s at a good clip I buck to the side and I dive headlong off the trail.

The mountain face on the north side goes sheer down I-don’t-know-how-long. There’s a snap somewhere in my lower half as I hit the ground legs-first. One leg, it feels like. Not sure where it’s broke but it can hardly move. Not the worst pain, hopped up on fear and adrenaline.

I go to reload and I don’t feel my bag. It’s on the forest floor, a dozen feet down the slope. I start to crawl for it. That hurts.

With one foot of progress made I hear the buzzer coming in overhead. At first I think he can’t find me in the dark. The sun’s below the mountain, blood red and almost gone now, leaving darkness like crude poured over the world. Then I realize he’s circling me. Playing with his food. That’s gonna be his end.

I grab for the Rose City phone in my pocket. The whole time he’s coming down low in front, scoping me out, hovering, like he wants to see if I’ll beg. I slide the brightness all the way up. The glare wrecks my night vision, shining bright on my face. I can still hear the buzzer a few yards ahead.

ELBAKYAN_PATTERN.mkv. I open it, hit play, feel the black little drone eye watching me. The video starts with black, and a countdown. Three, two. I hold the phone up like I’m showing the pilot a message, screen pointed straight at the FPV.

A light starts to flash like a taser going off. I only see it in the reflection on the plastic drone shell, but my head still throbs. It lasts about seven seconds total. The drone wobbles, listing left, then it spins out aimlessly into the trees like someone slapped a hand across the controls. It’s real.

There’s no explosion, just the snapping of rotors and motor failure. I hear it better than I see it, the blackness encroaching. In my victory I give a whooping caveman yell. I imagine the bitchmade pilot seizing, drooling, pissing himself at his desk all wrapped up in cables as he dies. I still can’t really move my leg.

The Columbia’s the last thing left in the light of the sun, wide ripples shining red in the river valley below. I almost swear I hear engines way down there, maybe on the interstate. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s just the ringing in my ears.

I make sure the video’s closed and open the dial screen on the satellite phone. I consider which number to call. Will the Oregon Guard come get me? The Idaho Militia sure wouldn’t. They barely even CASEVAC officers, much less penal enlisted. More than likely they’ll tell me to wait until the Easter push, when they take Mosier through to Hood River and hopefully Beaverton. How many days will that be? Three? Can I last three days out here with a shattered leg?

For a brief flash I wonder if the FO would rescue me, if I called Portland, if I offered them something they can use. Before I can finish the thought, I see the big black flatline at the screen’s top right, where the sat link symbol should be.

The sat card is on Jensen’s corpse. Jensen’s corpse is on the trail. The trail is thirty feet above me, up a cliff wall. Even in death you still find one more way to fuck me, kid.

I’m not imagining the engines. Big, heavy diesel and treads are rolling in a column on I-84. They’re coming from the east. They’re our guys. Easter’s come early. At the closest point, they’ll only be some eight hundred feet away. I’ll get them to spot me. They’ve got to spot me.

There’s roaring in the sky. Yellow streaks coming down from the west, all over the valley. Devil’s piss, someone called it back in Redmond. Firestarter rockets.

Three hit the river and blow, burning in greasy pools on the surface of the water. Two more hit I-84 and go up like pyrotechnics at a demolition derby. The Bradleys in the column drive straight through.

More rockets come down on the hillside, indiscriminate, spraying incendiary gel. Two trees go up in a blaze, then four, turning the night from black to hell’s own orange. They’re torching everything they can’t have. Charlie’s the one spraying napalm, and I’m the Cong.

I hear impacts behind me, and a crackle like that yule log video people put on their TV. Louder. Louder. The taste of smoke makes it real. This ain’t no VR, Duag. You’re gonna burn.

I don’t want to burn. The flames leap from branch to falling branch of ponderosa pine all around me, almost too bright to watch. I’m encircled. The pines stand like men in ritual. I’m their sacrifice.

It’s a dry heat now, starved of moisture by the inferno. It reminds me of home. I pray to God to forgive me for all I’ve done and have yet to do. I wonder if I’ll see the man I killed outside that bar, if I do make it up there to heaven. I doubt Charlie goes to heaven.

The flames are close now. I unlock the phone and I open the Recents page in the Files app. There she is. Elbakyan.

I pull in a breath almost too thick with smoke to breathe. I press play. Three. Two.

It’s actually beautiful. I hold it right up to my eyes, at first to ensure the effectiveness but then just to enjoy it for its own sake. It’s like it’s changing my brain, washing all my problems away and replacing them with peace. Is this what the FPV jockey felt at the end? How could I ever have hated him? He was my brother.

My thoughts lose their sense. I wish everyone could feel this. Maybe someone will sneak it on air during the Super Bowl. That would be something. Then I can’t think at all. The flames reach my backpack and my jaw goes slack and I I I I I I I I—

God help me.

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