A Song Called Youth (4 page)

. . . and they threw her out a fucking window.

Out a window, and she fell forty stories down, and I opened up on them with my rifle. I was firing at a monster, this mass of arms and legs and screaming heads; it backed out and left some of its parts behind with my bullet-holes in them, and I looked with binoculars and saw they were just ordinary people. I had shot two old women, a fifteen-year-old boy, and a guy who looked a lot like my brother Barry except he had a mustache.

It was a shock. I’d, y’know, shot
individual people.
And everything was changed. The mob came back and some of them had guns now, so I went to the roof and hid in the little house for the elevator motor, and they didn’t find me. And they left the place pretty much the way you see it. Then two weeks later the lines broke and the Russians moved in. Occupied the town. And it was just another army. A lot of people thought the Russians would be better than the NATO armies. But there was no food and more people starved . . . You must have been here—No? How long have you been here? Oh, you were in a Camp then . . . And then the Allies tried to retake Amsterdam with the tactical nukes and we couldn’t believe it. Small warheads, short-term radiation. No big problem, right? Only kill a fourth of the town’s population—you make an omelet you gotta break some eggs. At least a fourth of the town died. In a week. And then the earthworks were sabotaged, and some of the Dutch actually immolated themselves in the squares. The work of centuries to take Holland from the sea reduced to nothing in days, and they couldn’t handle it. Some days I understand why they did it and some days I don’t. People saw the old men set fire to themselves and most people took no notice. The gangs liked it, though, because it broke the monotony; they made a big production, big joke, of toasting ration bread on sticks over the coals of the guys who . . . 

I tried to get out of the city again and stole a boat, but NATO spotters caught me. Convinced I was on a mission for the Russians. They had Jenkins prisoner, too. That’s where we met. But he had the brig’s lock program dazzled, so he and I escaped, and there was no place to go but here, back here . . . We’ve done okay. We got a way into the spotter camps, steal supplies now and then. We had to shoot some scavengers one day, but mostly we stay out of trouble, out of anything that looks like it might remotely be considered subversive, and they don’t come looking for us. The Armies . . . we don’t even talk them down. Either side. Because none of them give a fuck. NATO, the Russians, Americans, Brits, Czechs. Everybody calls them The Armies. Nobody cares
which
army. If you’re army, you’re The Man in the Helmet . . . 

Smoke didn’t say anything for a long time. Not even to himself. He was too tired. He knew there was a lot more, but it was more he didn’t have to ask about.

A little later Hard-Eyes mentioned family in the States. Mostly he tried not to think about them, because the scramble screen blocked transmissions—all the civvy frequencies anyway and lots of others—so there was no way to get news. Social networking was blocked. Fones blocked. Why torture yourself wondering . . . wondering what it was like in the States now.

From an end-of-term report by thirteen-year-old Gary Krueger, of Cincinnati, Ohio, entitled “The Cause of the War.” Gary’s report grade was B+.

Different people have different ideas about why the Third World War started. I asked my C-driver Seeker to look in the Internet to see if there was a list of reasons. It found thirty-three reasons which don’t agree with each other, and they come from seventeen different groups of people.

The most commonly given reason is the one given by registered members of the Republican Party. They say that Greater Russia has been building up its strength in secret for years. They were making it look like less than it was, with underground training places. Then they saw that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was not maintaining its strength in Europe and was letting the United States carry the burden, so they saw they had a chance to take advantage of this weakness. Also they say that there were crop failures and industrial problems and all that corruption and mobster activity and other problems in Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries were rebelling and wanted to be independent. So Koziski of Greater Russia, after the coup in 2031, he thought that a war would distract people from these problems and bring the old Warsaw Pact countries back together because they would unite against an enemy. Also the Russians were running out of power supplies and wanted to capture coal and oil and atomic energy plants and microwave receiving stations that get orbital power. They also wanted to embarrass the Americans like they did after the “Bay of Pigs fight,” [sic] which was something that happened to the USA in the twentieth century that made the USA let the Soviet Union get concessions, even though this Greater Russian government is a different government than the USSR government.

The Democratic Party people mostly say that the US government pushed the Russian government into starting a war by installing the Milstar 7 and Milstar 8 military satellite systems in orbit. The Russians’ satellites weren’t as good and they were paranoid that we could use our system to shoot down their missiles and so we could invade them or attack them and they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves. So they wanted to take new territory over in Europe to capture Europe ground-based missiles and to create a “buffer zone” to stop invasion, and also, the Democrats agree on this part, they wanted to unite their people against an enemy and make them forget their problems.

The third group of people say that it is because of an “international conspiracy of Jews and Muslims to destroy the United States” that made the Russians do it. I think this a dumb idea because Jews and Muslims don’t work together and how could the Jewish people control the Russians when the Russians are persecuting them all the time?

I think the war was caused by all the reasons said by the first two groups.

A note to Gary Krueger from the teacher:
This is a good report, but I think you use too much Internet material, too much online searching. Too many students do that! That’s letting the computer do your work for you. If you do it that way, you won’t remember what you learn. Also, be careful when you make sentences not to run them together with so many and’s. You are making run-on sentences.

The following is a poem written by a student in Gary Krueger’s World Affairs class, Barbara Wycowski, twelve years old:

ON A DAY PRETTY SOON

Joe Smith didn’t finish eating his apple

Jane Jones didn’t finish reading her book

Bob Farmer didn’t finish playing his video game

Ann Franklin didn’t finish posting on Facebook

Jim Banks didn’t finish wrapping his present

Mary didn’t finish writing her letter

Dan didn’t finish singing his song

Barbara didn’t finish writing her poem

Because the hydrogen bombs exploded and

everyone died and the whole world was finished and it

was the end of everything completely and absolutely.

The following is from a report from Barbara Wycowski for her World Affairs class entitled “Why There Hasn’t Been Nuclear War So Far”:

. . . In 2030 the USA and Greater Russia signed a treaty called the Conventional War Limitations Treaty in which they agreed that if they had an armed conflict they would limit the use of nuclear weapons to small tactical warheads. The use of those kind would be controlled by an upper limit of how many can be used. A lot of people said that agreeing to make a war in any way was immoral, but this agreement so far has prevented the world war from being a nuclear holocaust. But I think it is only a matter of time and pretty soon it will escalate into a world war, and then we’ll all get killed, so I don’t know why I’m writing this, except so I can stay in school to make my Mom happy until we’re dead . . . 

A photocopy of Barbara’s poem and essay was sent by her teacher to her school guidance counselor. On it the teacher wrote,
“I am very worried about Barbara and a lot of other students who seem to have despaired of ever growing up. There is also another group of students who seem to be reacting to the danger of a wide nuclear war by sliding into a jingoism which I also find disturbing . . . ”

They were lying in the dark, each wrapped in his black-market US Army blanket. The cardboard pallet under Smoke’s blanket was cold, slightly moist, enough to give him chills.

Smoke said, softly, “Hard-Eyes.”

“Yeah.”

Sure, the guy was awake. No way he trusted Smoke yet. Lying there with his old-before-their-time eyes wide open and smoldering in the darkness.

“Hard-Eyes, there are some who are worse than others. Some Armies.”

“That right?”

“Yeah, The Second Alliance.”

“You call that an army? More like multinational MPs.”

“Uh-uh. SA’s run by the Second Circle. You know what that is?”

“I saw the NR leaflets. Say they’re fascists. Maybe, but no one takes them seriously. Just another gang.”

“That’s what a fascist army is, a big
gang.
The SA’s the Second Circle’s army. NATO’s using them, but they’re using NATO . . . You heard about the new war front?”

“No.” The cardboard rasped on the concrete floor—the looters had torn up the carpet—as he got up on an elbow. Hard-Eyes asked, “You been outside?” An edge of accusation. A traveler from outside the city was expected to share news, and rumors—which were indistinguishable. Survival protocol.

“Haven’t been outside Amsterdam except once this year,” Smoke said. “I’ve been mostly over by where the port used to be. Last time I was outside I got indentured into the NATO logistics line. Supposed to’ve been a ‘civilian freight porter’ with a salary.”

Hard-Eyes snorted.

“But you know,” Smoke said, “we ate once a day. Guaranteed.”

“That’s all right. Not bad. And you were behind the fighting.”

“Except some of the camp got a dose of forty-four.”

“Neurotoxin forty-four? I think that’s what’s wrong with Pelter. Got a dose of forty-four. He was raving, on and off, when we first found him. It shot his immune system to hell.”

“You took in a sick guy? You don’t seem like Red Cross volunteers . . . ”

Two-second hesitation. Then Hard-Eyes said, “Jenkins knew him. Jenkins is a little limp-dicked in some ways. And it was like taking in a sick cat, nurse the cat to health and in gratitude the little fucker gives you ringworm or something . . . You said ‘we’ a while ago. About coming into town with someone.”

“I came in with . . . ” He almost said the name. “A guy who still has connections with the Allies. But they don’t run him.”

“As far as you know.”

“As far as I know,” Smoke agreed.

They were quiet for a couple of minutes, because of a spasm of coughing from Pelter. He wheezed for a while and then it subsided. His lungs rattled when he inhaled.

Smoke shivered and pulled his grimy army blanket more closely around his shoulders.

“So how’s the front moving?” came Hard-Eyes, suddenly, a sharp question out of the darkness.

“It’s moving completely out of Western Europe.”

Silence, except for the dull patter of raindrops in the tub.

“Did you hear me?” Smoke asked.

“I heard some horseshit.”

“The guy I mentioned, he got it straight from the Allied commander’s radio code officer. NATO’s leaving a skeleton force in Amsterdam, Paris, Dresden . . . They’ve pushed the Russians back, and the story is the Russians are regrouping to hold the line along their traditional borders and around what used to be Warsaw Pact countries. Concentrating on a naval push. The Russians are losing the land battle and winning the sea battle, so who knows how it’ll equalize . . . ”

“The Russian naval push. Finally. Those outdated nuclear subs. With the nasty missiles . . . ” Sounding almost convinced. “Could be rumor number ten thousand five hundred and two.” In wartime Europe, contradictory rumors came and went like autumn leaves in a hurricane.

“You know it’s not. It feels right.”

“And you think the SA will step into the vacuum left by the Russians and NATO.”

“You really believe NATO can police the back-territory? That much land? Who’s left to do it? Who’d do it here? Paris is hanging together on a smaller police force than New York’s got in Central Park. They can hang together because of the military presence. The military moves out and the place is down the drain. And they’re moving out, mostly. So the Second Alliance is hired to move in to police things. The UN Security Council sponsored the SA in this.”

“The SA . . . ” Hard-Eyes was quiet for a moment, then, all in a rush: “NATO couldn’t be that . . . I mean, just to turn it over to them. NATO’d try to set up provisional governments modeled on the ones that fell.”

“That’s what they’re calling it: transitional period to get them into the provisional government stage. ‘Until autonomy is practical.’ In the meantime the SA is providing the men to keep order, supposedly . . . ”

“No, dude. Everybody knows about the SA. NATO wouldn’t give it
them
 . . . ”

“Are you serious? Are you that naïve?”

Silence. Then, “I guess mostly it’s people in the underGrid that know . . . but NATO couldn’t be that stupid.”

“NATO is mostly shot to hell except for Scandinavia, Spain, what’s left of Britain, the States. And who pulls the strings in the States? SA sympathizers.”

After a moment Hard-Eyes said, “No, come on. Okay, maybe it’s true. Then what? Is the blockade still up?”

“No, but the SA will be empowered to ‘enact migratory containment.’ ”