Red Zone Son

Chapter 24

When Solomon opened his eyes he immediately wished he hadn’t. His head was aching. He felt groggy. He was lying flat on his back, but the floor underneath him was moving, jostling, as if he were in a truck. Actually, based on the metal surface he was lying on, maybe he was in a truck. He tried to pull himself to his feet but managed only to get to a sitting position. From the dim light filtering through the gaps in the truck’s cargo area he could tell he wasn’t alone. He was in the back, and there were maybe twenty other people seated in front of him on what appeared to be crates lining the cargo area’s perimeter. Other than a plastic wristband someone had put on him while he was knocked out, there wasn’t anything else on him; he wasn’t restrained in any way.

It smelled like a field latrine. It took him a moment to figure out that that was because there was a bucket half-full of waste in the back corner, its smell permeating the entire truck. The stink was so strong it was distracting. Solomon felt as if he could only distantly hear the rumble of the truck’s engine. When the truck swayed unexpectedly, he was sent sprawling into the crate nearest him. He grasped its edges to steady himself, then pulled himself up on top of it like everyone else. He scanned their faces as he did so. Nobody he recognized was there.

Rithvik wasn’t there.

Solomon closed his eyes as memory flooded through him. Rithvik, shouting at him to get away. The blast from his cuff. The explosions right before, one, two. The devices that had to have gone off shortly after he’d been knocked unconscious, killing the other soldiers he’d helped free.

Manal had been right. It had been a trap. And he was the one who’d set it off.

Shame was too weak a word for what he felt. Along with it burned an intense regret. I should’ve listened to Manal. I should’ve gone to the red zone with her and reported to the militia what happened, so they could send someone competent to rescue them, someone not stupid like me. I shouldn’t have insisted on doing it on my own. The cuffs must have been a failsafe, a last resort if a rescue attempt actually succeeded. Why didn’t I see that coming? The blue zone was never going to be okay with us just walking away. They were never going to let that even be an option.

Now Solomon was living out the nightmare he’d been afraid of ever since Umma and Dad had disappeared, stuffed into the back of a truck, headed to God knows where, completely by himself. He was still dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing, his windbreaker and jeans and civilian sneakers. He pulled his hood over his head and buried his face in his hands. His backpack was gone. No pistol, no water bottle, no tools. Nothing but the weight of his own mistakes around his neck.

Get up, he tried to tell himself. Don’t wallow now. Do it later, after you’ve at least looked around the truck. But he couldn’t move. Instead, a proverb came to him, Proverbs 18:14. A man’s spirit will endure sickness; but a broken spirit who can bear? It fit. Solomon didn’t think he’d known what real brokenness was until now. He didn’t even want to pray, didn’t want to do anything but regret every single choice he’d made that led him to the moment he’d set Rithvik up to die.

But beneath his feet he could tell the truck was coming to a stop, and despite himself his militia-trained body was instinctively preparing to take advantage of whatever change was about to happen. He got up and began walking down the aisle between the crates, brushing past knees and legs. One man snapped at him when Solomon stumbled into him. Almost everyone else in the truck was a woman.

From the scrapes he could feel on his skin he must have slid down to the back after being placed up front. The fact that nobody in the truck had bothered to help him meant they were either terrified, callous, or both. He hoped it was the former. Certainly nobody tried to stop him from making his way up front where they were opening the truck doors and shoving someone in.

The doors closed again when he was a few feet away from whoever-it-was. His heartbeat quickened when he saw short blond hair. It was probably another White guy, but just in case, Solomon turned him over onto his back.

It was Wilson.

Relief rushed through him. He knew it’d be better for both of them if Wilson were free and able to rescue him, but for the moment the release Solomon felt from being alone was overwhelming. He knelt at Wilson’s side and put his mouth to his ear. Normally he’d call him Lieutenant Wilson to his face, but he wasn’t stupid enough to announce to the truck that they were red zone soldiers. “Sam,” he whispered instead. “Wake up, wake up!”

Without warning, Wilson’s right hand was clutching his arm, while his left hand was rising up to cover his mouth. “Shh, shh,” he was saying, pressing his palm into Solomon’s jaw. He was blinking and looked dizzy. “Shh, shh.” The truck started moving again. He helped Wilson to his feet and guided him to the crate he’d been sitting on in the back. Now that the truck was speeding up, it was harder not to slam into the legs of the mostly women sitting on their crates along the way. When they finally did sit down, Wilson didn’t say anything. He was looking at the other people around them, staring at them, as if he could see something Solomon couldn’t see in the flashes of light that shone through the edges of the truck’s doors. Then Wilson tapped his arm with his knuckles. “Follow me,” he said.

Solomon obeyed. Wilson led him back up front, right next to the door where there was the most light. He stood a little bit behind Wilson who looked down at the middle-aged White woman sitting on the crate closest to the door. “I want to sit here,” he told her. He pointed. “Get up and go back.”

She gave him a single terrified glance and then gave up her seat. Wilson turned and said the same thing to the younger, brown-skinned woman sitting on the opposite crate. When she vacated her seat, Wilson sat down, then told Solomon to take the other spot. He did. There was a Black girl next to him, really young, almost Adah’s age. She scooted the tiniest bit away from him when he sat down, as if she wanted to give him all the room he demanded, but without making it obvious that he was demanding it.

But he wasn’t demanding it. He didn’t like bullying girls. He wouldn’t do it to Adah. But he knew better than to speak up and undercut Wilson even in private, let alone in public. So he stayed silent and waited for his next order.

It came the next time the truck door opened. A plastic gallon jug was thrust into the cargo area; murmurs of relief rose up. Wilson grabbed the jug before anyone else could touch it, pulled off the cap, and handed it to Solomon. “Drink,” he said. “Don’t stop until I tell you to.” He even had his knife hand out, as if they were back in boot camp and Solomon was draining his canteen slower than he liked. After Wilson told him he was done, Solomon handed the jug back to him. Wilson drank then gave it to the Black girl next to Solomon. “Pass it back and forth across the aisle,” he said.

Everyone listened to him. Solomon felt better after having had some water, although, as usual, having one need met now meant he was intensely aware of all the other unmet ones. He started to catalog them in his mind in order of urgency so that he didn’t have to waste time thinking if the opportunity came up to meet one of them when he heard shouts coming from the back of the truck. “Everyone drank all the water!” a woman cried out. “It’s empty!”

“Shut up,” Wilson barked. “They’ll bring more later.”

But they didn’t. Not until the next day, after several more people were thrust into the truck and a recyclable pill container labeled HRT was handed to one of the prisoners. Wilson did the same thing again when the plastic gallon was shoved in, told Solomon to drink first, and to not stop until ordered to. It was harder this time to obey, but he’d been conditioned to do so for over a year and a half now, conditioned to ignore what he was feeling in favor of what he was being told to do. His body reacted immediately to Wilson’s spoken command. He drank until Wilson told him to stop. He could hear complaints rising but Wilson told them once again to shut up, that they’d get their turn. Someone started to cry. “If you’ve got the tears to cry, you don’t need more water,” Wilson snapped.

Solomon didn’t like this. He didn’t like any part of this. He wanted to cover his ears when the crying increased after the water jug again ended up empty before the end. He wanted to beg Wilson to let them share more equally. He knew Wilson was looking out for him, that the man was trying to take care of the one soldier he had left, but did he have to do it like this? Maybe in blue zones they thought you should treat women the same as men or whatever, but hadn’t Wilson been in the red zone long enough to know better?

That night, Solomon again fell asleep sitting up, listening to the whispers of the other passengers stuffed into the truck with him. He got up once to use the bucket in the back. It was too dark to see so it felt as if he ended up bumping into every single person along the way. At one point, he even tripped over someone lying in the middle of the aisle. From the strength of the stench he was close to the bucket, so he muttered an apology and tried to get around whoever-it-was. But whoever-it-was didn’t respond. Didn’t even shift. Solomon tried again, feeling his way through the darkness with his feet, to get around the person sleeping in the aisle, but it was as if she was sprawled out horizontally. He had to step over her, so he did.

It wasn’t until Solomon was done and about to turn back that it occurred to him to help her move out of the way so someone else didn’t step on her. He knelt and touched her shoulder. The truck lurched, and his hand ended up pushing against her throat. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but she still didn’t move.

That was when it hit him. Steadying himself against a crate, he checked her pulse. He felt nothing under his fingers, no throb, no distant beat.

If she was seated in the back, that meant she had to have been one of the women who hadn’t gotten any water. And who knew how many days she’d already been in the truck before him. Maybe she’d been sick when she’d come in, and not getting any water had tipped her over the edge.

Solomon took a shallow breath. With both hands, he gently pushed the body to the side so that there was enough room in the aisle to get to the latrine bucket. Then he fumbled his way back to his seat at the very front. He closed his eyes. This time, when he finally fell back asleep, he found himself dreaming of Rithvik.