Born in Salt Read online

  BORN IN SALT

  T. C. Weber

  Copyright © 2020 by T. C. Weber. All rights reserved.

  Born in Salt is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  To contact the author, visit https://www.tcweber.com/

  Born in Salt / Weber, T. C.

  Freedom Thorn Press, 2020.

  ISBN 978-1-7369017-0-0

  FIC040000: FICTION / Alternative History

  FIC055000: FICTION / Dystopian

  Cover design by Robert E. Smith

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Eric Bakutis, Wayne Martin, Eric Guy, Warren Schmidt, Julie Miller, Renni Browne, Shannon Roberts, and Jane Knuth for reading drafts and providing feedback, and the critique groups at the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (www.bsfs.org) and the Annapolis Fiction and Poetry Writers, as well as others who read portions of the manuscript.

  Broke the deep slumber in my brain a crash

  Of heavy thunder, that I shook myself,

  As one by main force roused...

  For certain on the brink

  I found me of the lamentable vale,

  The dread abyss, that joins a thunderous sound

  Of plaints innumerable. Dark and deep,

  And thick with clouds overspread, mine eye in vain

  Explored its bottom, nor could aught discern.

  - Dante Alighieri, Inferno

  Chapter Zero

  Sgt. Jacob Adamson stared out one of the bulletproof side windows of the ATH-3C ‘Retribution’ airborne assault helicopter as it flew over green hills and fields. The other ’copters in their formation—more ‘Retributions’ and an escort of gunships—were close enough that Jake could see other faces staring back. Beyond rose the lush forested peaks of the Escambray range, some areas scarred raw from past battles. They flew below mountain height, to make it more likely they’d catch the enemy by surprise, but high enough to make the ’copters less vulnerable to ground fire.

  As usually happened en route to landing zones, images of Rachel’s beautiful face and trim body drove everything else from focus and gave him a raging hard-on. “I love you,” her ruby lips intoned between orgasms their last night together, right before Jake got shipped out to Cuba. As he boarded the bus from New Bethany to Scott Air Force Base in nearby Shiloh, her last words were “Come back in one piece,” a psalm that still echoed in his mind.

  Jake was due for leave soon. He couldn’t wait to hold his fiancée again, kiss her warm lips and perfumed neck, and most of all, drive between those smooth white thighs. Two weeks of non-step sex with the hottest dish in New Bethany! He had to see family, too. Go hunting and fishing with my brother, watch his band play, say hi to Sarah and the rest.

  Strapped in next to Jake in the cramped cargo section, PFC Seth Bowen, a fellow survivor of the Hill 249 disaster, shouted over the noisy rotor blades, “Anything interesting out there?”

  “More of the same,” Jake yelled back.

  “What do you think?” Bowen asked.

  “It’s mop-up. We’ll be fine.” It was Jake’s job to ensure this, that all his men went home alive.

  Ben was right, I shouldn’t have re-enlisted. The Army had given Jake a sizable bonus, though, which his family needed to pay off the bank. And now that he was serving overseas, he’d be eligible for VFW membership, practically the only way someone from a poor farm family could secure the connections needed to get ahead in the world. Like to run for county council like Rachel had suggested, and stand up to goons like Sheriff Johnson.

  Alpha Company’s helicopters cut over the mountain spine and headed south. The knuckleheads in headquarters had decided one company was enough for the mission. Their destination, the village of San Isidore. According to Captain Tannin, the battalion’s military intelligence liaison, it was an insurgency stronghold, and the home town of one of the rebel commanders.

  The village came into sight—a few dozen red-tiled roofs atop white houses, nested among fruit and palm trees, with a Catholic chapel and a school in the center.

  A squadron of Viper ground support jets zoomed in low at an angle. The deep thuds of explosions carried over the whine of the copter rotors and rattled Jake’s bones. Giant fireballs blossomed upward from the village, angry fists of orange and black thrusting into the sky.

  Did they have to use such heavy ordnance? Jake turned from the window and made hand signals to his quad, to get ready to deploy.

  The ’copters dropped into bean fields about a mile from the village, forming a double semicircle. The rear door swung down. Jake waved his arm toward it and led his ten men out the back of the helicopter. As soon as all boots hit the ground, it took off again.

  Every building and tree in the village belched flames and smoke. Even a mile away, Jake felt rippling heat, smelled burning gasoline, and heard faint screams.

  Just beyond Jake’s hearing range, Captain Tannin, a narrow-faced man who never smiled, and the German S.S. adviser, Hauptsturmführer Krüger, peered through binoculars and conferred with the company commander.

  The radio operator relayed orders and the platoon commanders gave the order to march. “No one gets past us,” Lt. Wheeler, the new commander of 3rd Platoon, told Jake and the other two squad sergeants.

  Jake took point for his squad—he was the most seasoned, as well as the best shot. He moved carefully, scanning ahead for partisans and searching for mines. No gunfire came their way. There didn’t seem to be any resistance at all. The company’s gunships circled the burning village, laying down machine gun fire.

  A horse galloped across the bean fields toward Jake, fire trailing from its back and tail, eyes wide with terror, froth spitting from its mouth. Poor creature. He braced his rifle, aimed at its head, and pulled the trigger. The horse dropped and burned in place, smelling like gasoline-soaked barbecue.

  The flames had died down by the time the infantry reached the outskirts of the village, or what was left of it. Jake spotted no signs of life, not even birds or insects.

  Accompanied by Captain Tannin and the Hauptsturmführer, Lt. Wheeler called his sergeants over. “We’re on head staking duty.”

  What? “Excuse me, sir,” Jake asked the lieutenant, “did you say head staking?”

  “Orders. Cut off every head you find and place it on a stake outside the village. Divvy up your men accordingly.”

  The Hauptsturmführer spoke in barely accented English, more to the officers than the sergeants. “The key to pacifying resistance is the precise yet overwhelming application of fear. When the natives see what we’ve done here, they’ll think twice before supporting the rebellion. It has worked well elsewhere.”

  “Sir,” Jake said, “may I speak frankly?”

  The lieutenant frowned. “Go ahead.”

  “That’s fucking barbaric, sir.” We’re Americans, not Nazis, even if Germany is our ally and controls a third of the world.

  The lieutenant’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Just do as you’re told. I’m not in the habit of repeating orders.”

  Inside the village, the houses and other buildings had all collapsed into piles of blackened bricks and wood, some of it still smoking. The trees were charred fingers stabbing at the sky. Burnt corpses lay amid the bricks. They smelled like the horse, only a thousand times worse, people who just an hour earlier, might have been smiling or laughing or expressing love or perhaps arguing about pointless things that didn’t matter anymore. There wasn’t much in the way of weapons, only a few old carbines and shotguns.

  The bodies were thickest inside the collapsed church—stiff blackened limbs, frozen screams and scorched bones. Maybe they heard we were coming, and went inside to pray. Most of the corpses were small. Children. Jake’s squad picked through the church,
not speaking.

  Jake unsheathed his combat knife and knelt by the blackened eyeless corpse of a child, blade trembling. He couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.

  I’m not going to do this. Or anything like this, ever again. My squad’s not going to do this either. Jake lowered the knife and scanned the burnt church. “If you’re watching me from above, Mom, please forgive me.”

  He gagged, stumbled to his feet, then threw up his breakfast on the remains of the altar.

  Chapter One

  “Benjamin,” our slick-haired preacher said into the pulpit microphone, “you have some words to share?” He stepped aside, offering up his post.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from the casket in front, draped with an American flag and surrounded by flickering candles and white lilies. The Army had sealed it, saying the remains hadn’t been recovered right away and weren’t suitable for viewing. Only a hint of disinfectant, a faint chlorine smell beneath the flower scent, gave away the presence of a body inside.

  My brother’s body.

  Jake’s face, blue-eyed and strong-jawed like a Hollywood cowboy, smiled from a framed photo displayed to the right of the casket, 1962-1983 beneath his name, then the national motto, ‘Love of God, Love of Country, Love of Duty.’ My eyes lingered on that smile, which was more of a smirk, like Jake had been thinking, “the world isn’t so hard if you play the game right.”

  “Benjamin?”

  I stood up from the pew, welcomed by a few coughs and lots of sniffles. Jake had been the family’s Big Hope and we’d never imagined him to get snuffed out like this. Sitting next to me in the front, Pop, who had refused to cry at Ma’s funeral, shuddered and choked.

  My stomach tightened. What was the point of this church stuff? It didn’t help when Ma died and it didn’t help when poor Abby died either. Jake deserved better than a catalog funeral.

  I patted Pop on the shoulder and edged past him. My feet dragged me across the red carpet, past my brother’s casket, and up the steps to the pulpit.

  Preacher Bill glared at me and tapped his index fingers together. Did he have better things to do? Or was he bent out of shape ’cause I hadn’t set foot in his church for so long? As if his smarmy Bible waving should make me appreciate my lot in life.

  I hesitated at the microphone. A cough escaped me and echoed off the pale blue walls.

  I’d held my share of audiences, but never this large, and never by myself, without even a guitar for help. Every pew was filled: easily a couple hundred people, all clothed in dark suits or dresses. Everyone in New Bethany knew my brother, or had at least seen him play football. In the entrance hall earlier they’d said one after another that Jake’s death was a damn shame, though most added that dying for one’s country was the greatest of honors.

  Behind me, the preacher sighed.

  Better get this over with. I unfolded my two-page speech, written in barely legible cursive and full of corrections. My eyes drifted to Rachel, Jake’s fiancée, sitting in the front row across the aisle from Pop and Grandpa. Her face, normally so flawless and assured, was wracked in agony, tears smearing her makeup.

  I laid the speech over the open Bible on the lectern and started to read. “Jacob Adamson was a rare figure. He was smart, handsome, and popular. He had a beautiful fiancée, land to till, and probably a career in politics down the line. It is a terrible tragedy that his life was cut short ...”

  An image flashed in my mind: the whole family, Ma and Abby too, gathered around the Christmas tree Pop said he’d planted the year Jake was born. I was six and my wool pajamas itched. But I was happy. We all were. Jake tore the paper off a model tank with moving treads, a present from Grandpa.

  Tears blurred my vision. He’s never, ever coming back.

  In the back pew, close to the door, a solitary dark face urged me forward. Sarah. They’d let her in or she snuck in. She mouthed something, probably akin to ‘the stage is yours.’

  I gave up on the speech and stuffed it in my pocket. “You all knew Jake. He was the guy I wish I was. I won’t lie and say he was perfect, but he was a lot closer than most people.”

  A lot closer than me.

  “He shouldn’t be lying in a coffin at twenty-one,” I said. “He should be sitting on a porch well into next century, grandkids and great-grandkids gathered ’round, telling his life story and farting dust.”

  No one laughed. Jake would have.

  “Pop taught me how to fish and trap and shoot a gun and lots of other things.” I cast a glance at Pop but he was too lost to notice. “But Jake was the one I did most of that with. We were a team, me, Jake, and Sarah, all the way up to high school. Jake was the leader of course since he was oldest. But he never bullied me and even stuck up for me. Can’t ask for more from a big brother.”

  In the back, Sarah wiped her nose. Up front, Rachel sobbed.

  My knees grew weak but I locked them rather than lean against the podium. “I’m supposed to quote Scripture and say how this is all part of God’s plan.” I stared at the Bible in front of me, open to 1 Corinthians 15. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?

  My shoulders tensed. We’d been robbed. Again. And the preacher and government thought it was glorious.

  “Death is victorious.” I gripped the mike and words spilled out. “Death always wins, and misery, and pain. That’s the world we’re stuck in.”

  The whole room seemed to hiss inward. Even Sarah and Rachel stared at me with open mouths. I eyed the cross on the wall behind the podium and nearly gave it the finger.

  I couldn’t stop my tongue, though. “If there’s a God, he’s a sadistic son of a bitch.”

  Pop’s face reddened and I stomped back down the pulpit steps. With all the scowls directed my way, I almost kept going. Out the door, out to freedom, where I could take off this damn noose they called a tie, run to one of my ponds, and take my peace in single combat with whatever largemouth bass I hadn’t bested yet.

  Wouldn’t be right to abandon my brother, though. I took my seat, Pop’s eyes still glued on me.

  Preacher Bill examined the ceiling, as if gathering strength, then shook his head and trudged to the microphone. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want …”

  People were still staring at me. I slunk against the back of the pew.

  “…Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

  My rod and my gun, they comfort me.

  * * *

  Most people had avoided me at the burial at New Bethany Baptist Cemetery, and now avoided me at the reception. Preacher Bill had offered to pray for my soul but I told him to pray for his own damn soul. His entourage of Praise the Lord housewives kept peering at me like I was a three-legged dog.

  I wasn’t up to talking anyway. I could still hear the shots fired by the honor guard at the grave site, each one piercing my heart like I was a mourning dove in season.

  I kept by the front window of our crowded living room. Grandpa and the other seniors sat on the tattered sofa or quilt-draped stuffed armchairs. The younger guests stood in trios or quartets, talking quietly without smiles. Throughout the room, embedded in baskets of goldenrod and blue monkshood, fragrant sprigs of rosemary hid the mold and mildew that had flourished inside the walls since Ma’s passing.

  Pop, standing with hunched shoulders, got most of the attention. He’d stopped crying and started drinking.

  “Picked up this bourbon on the drive through Kentucky,” one of his old Army buddies told him. “Supposed to be one of the best.” He poured a golden liquid into two aluminum mugs decorated by war eagles. The man, who had a flesh-colored patch over his left eye, thrust his mug toward the portraits of Presidents Lindbergh and Clark on the fireplace mantel, then turned to Pop. “Strength and honor.”

  Pop tapped mugs with him, but didn’t return the toast. He took a swig, exhaled, and said, “People die in war … but Jake, he was special. No one with more potential on God’s whole earth. We thou
ght for sure he’d come back without a scratch, and a fuller man. Like us when we came back from Haiti—stronger, more appreciative.”

  He gulped down more bourbon. “Shoulda been someone else who stepped on that mine.”

  Pop had been drinking the day we got the news. We’d delivered twelve thousand bushels of corn kernels to the Midland Grain Corporation, but they’d only paid half what we’d hoped, well below the break-even point. Two Army officers in dress uniforms, one of them a gray-haired chaplain, knocked on our door. The old chaplain sat us down in the living room and told us Jake had died instantly. Pop had kicked over the coffee table and swung the hat rack around and the officers had called in reinforcements from the car out front.

  A hand touched my shoulder. It was the Army grief counselor, a young guy with glasses and lieutenant bars. I couldn’t remember his name.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  I shrugged off his hand. “Fine.” I was only nineteen but I was a veteran at grief and didn’t need his help.

  When Sarah stepped in from our screened-in front porch, I lightened a little. She wore her winter dress, which was long and dark blue, not happy and flowery like her summer dress. A matching felt hat hid her short kinky hair. Her wide cheeks drooped and her molasses eyes were puffy from crying.

  I waved her over. Her parents and two older brothers followed her into the room. And behind them, a tall man dressed in a charcoal suit with a white fedora. His skin was deep black, darker than Sarah’s. His name eluded me but he looked familiar.

  Sarah threw fierce arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Ben.”

  She almost never called me Ben. Usually it was Deerslayer, which Jake had come up with. I almost never got skunked, and even if I went for a head shot, I never missed.