this—” He felt spittle form on his lips, wiped it away with his sleeve. The tray on his lap slid dangerously, and Thurman moved swifter than his years to catch it. He placed what was left of the meal on the bedside table, and up close, Donald could see that he had gotten older. The wrinkles were deeper, the skin hanging from the bones. He wondered how much time Thurman had spent awake while Donald slept.
“I killed a lot of men in the war,” Thurman said, looking down at the tray of half-eaten food.
Donald found himself focused on the old man’s neck. He interlocked his hands to keep them still. This sudden admission about killing made it seem as if he could read Donald’s mind, like this was some kind of a warning for Donald to stay his murderous plans.
Thurman turned to the dresser and picked up the folded report. He opened it, and Donald caught sight of the pale blue dollops, his ice-tinged tears from earlier.
“Some say killing gets easier the longer you’re at it,” Thurman said. He sounded sad, not threatening. Donald looked down at his own knees and saw that they were bouncing. He forced his heels against the carpet and tried to pin them there.
“For me, it only got worse. There was a man in Iran—”
“The entire goddamn planet,” Donald whispered, stressing each word. This was what he said, but all he could think about was his wife. Bombs going off, the plans he’d drawn, Helen pulled down the wrong hill, marbles rolling apart, everything that had ever existed crumbling to ruin. “We killed everyone.”
The senator took in a deep breath and held it a moment. “I told you,” he said. “They were already dead.”
Donald’s knees began bouncing again. There was no controlling it. Thurman studied the report, seemed unsure of something. The paper faintly shook, but maybe it was the overhead vent blowing, which also stirred his hair.
“We were outside of Kashmar,” Thurman said. “This was toward the end of the war, when we were getting our butts kicked and telling the world we were winning. I had a corporal in my squad, our team medic, a James Hannigan. Young. Always cracking jokes but serious when he needed to be. The kind of guy everyone likes. The hardest kind to lose.”
Thurman shook his head. He stared off into the distance. The vent in the ceiling quieted, but the report continued to quiver.
“I killed a lot of men during the war, but only once to really
“How many billions—?” Donald swallowed. He slid to the edge of the bed and reached toward the tray. Thurman knew what he was after and passed the glass of water, half empty. He continued to ignore Donald’s complaints.
“Hannigan got hit with shrapnel outside of Kashmar. If we could get him to a medic, it was the kind of wound you survived, the kind you lift your shirt in a bar to show off the scars one day. But he couldn’t walk, and it was too hot to send in an airlift. Our squad was hemmed in and would need to fight our way out. I didn’t think we could get to a safe LZ in time to save him. But what I knew, because I’d seen it too many damn times before, is that two or three of my men would die trying to get him out. That’s what happens when you’re lugging a soldier instead of a rifle.” Thurman pressed his sleeve to his forehead. “I’d seen it before.”
“You left him behind,” Donald said, seeing where this was going. He took a sip of water. The surface was agitated.
“No. I killed him.” Thurman stared at the foot of the bed. He stared at nothing. “The enemy wouldn’t have let him die. Not there, not like that. They would’ve patched him up so they could catch it on film. They would’ve stitched up his belly so they could open his throat.” He turned to Donald. “I had to make a decision, and I had to make it fast. And the longer I’ve lived with it, the more I’ve come to agree with what I did. We lost one man that day. I saved two or three others.”
Donald shook his head. “That’s not the same as what we— what you—”
“It’s precisely the same. Do you remember Safed? What the media called the outbreak?”
Donald remembered Safed. An Israeli town near Nazareth. Near Syria. The deadliest WMD strike of the war. He nodded.
“The rest of the world would’ve looked just like that. Just like Safed.” Thurman snapped his fingers. “Ten billion lights go out all at once. We were already infected, son. It was just a matter of triggering it. Safed was… like a beta test.”
Donald shook his head. “I don’t believe you. Why would anyone do that?”
Thurman frowned. “Don’t be naive, son. This life means nothing to some. You put a switch in front of ten billion people, a switch that kills every one of us the moment you hit it, and you’d have thousands of hands racing to be the one. Tens of thousands. It would only be a matter of time. And that switch
“No.” Donald flashed back to the first conversation he’d ever had with the senator as a member of Congress, after winning office the first time. It had felt like this, the lies and the truth intermingling and shielding one another. “You’ll never convince me,” he said. “You’ll have to drug me or kill me. You’ll never convince me.”
Thurman nodded as if he agreed. “Drugging you doesn’t work. I’ve read up on your first shift. There’s a small percentage of people with some kind of resistance. I’d love to know why.”
Donald laughed. He settled against the wall behind the cot and nestled into the darkness the top bunk provided. “Maybe I’ve seen too much to forget,” he said.
“No, I don’t think so.” Thurman lowered his head so he could still make eye contact. Donald took a sip of water, both hands wrapped around the glass. “The more you see,” Thurman said, “the worse the trauma is, the better it works. Except for some people. Which is why we took a sample.”
Donald glanced down at his arm. A small square of gauze had been taped over the spot of blood left by the doctor’s needle. He felt a caustic mix of helplessness and fear well up, the mix that moves caged animals to bite at curious hands. “You woke me to take my blood?”
“Not exactly.” Thurman hesitated. “Your resistance is something I’m curious about. The reason you’re awake is because I was asked to wake you. We’re losing silos—”
“I thought that was the plan,” Donald spat. “Losing silos. I thought that was what you wanted.” He remembered crossing one out with red ink, all those many lives lost. They had accounted for this. Silos were expendable. That’s what he’d been told.
Thurman shook his head. “Whatever’s happening out there, we need to understand it. And there’s someone here who… who thinks you may have stumbled onto the answer. A few questions, and then we can put you back under.”
Back under. So he wasn’t going to be out for long. They woke him to take his blood and to drill into his mind, and then back to sleep. Donald rubbed his arms, which felt thin and atrophied. He was dying in that pod. Only, more slowly than he would like.
“We need to know what you remember about this report.” Thurman held it out. Donald waved the thing away.
“I already looked it over,” he said. He didn’t want to see it again. He could close his eyes and see people spilling out onto the dusty land, a cloud of killing mist, the people that he had ordered dead, more people being trampled inside.
“We have other medications that might ease the—”
“No. No more drugs.” Donald crossed his wrists and spread his arms out, slicing the air with both hands. “Look, I don’t have a resistance to your drugs.” The truth. He was sick of the lies. “There’s no mystery. I just stopped taking the pills.”
It felt good to admit it. What were they going to do, anyway? Put him back to sleep? That was the answer no matter what. He took another sip of water while he let the confession sink in. He swallowed.
“I kept them in my gums and spat them out later. It’s as simple as that. Probably the case with anyone else remembering. Like Hal, or Carlton, or whatever his name was.”
