The Romero Strain (28 page)

“Joseph Daniel Joshua Young,” I began. “You have been asked here today because you have left us no choice. I spoke with you several days ago about your lackadaisical attitude and your tardiness, and told you that consequences would follow if you didn’t take things seriously and fulfill your responsibilities. Either you didn’t believe me or just didn’t care.”

“I don’t recognize
your
authority. And I won’t recognize your decisions, either,” he brazenly informed me.

“Strange, Joe. When we set up our decision making team you didn’t want anything to do with it, and yet you constantly challenged me. It’s not
my
authority, but the collective you’re challenging.”

“Then where is everyone else?”

“They are busy fulfilling
their
responsibilities, something
you
refuse to do, which is the reason you are here. There are three matters that have brought us to our decision. The same ones we discussed several days ago. One: lack of courtesy and respect to your fellow survivors. Two: constant tardiness and failing to do your assignments. And three: failing to complete the tasks assigned, when you decide to do them. Do you have a response to this?”

He was defiant in his answers. “One: didn’t ask to be here. Two: even if I did, this isn’t the military and I don’t have to abide by your rules. Three: leave me alone.”

“‘If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.’”

“What?”

“It’s the Dali Lama, Joe. You eat our food and enjoy all the amenities, but are unwilling to contribute to the wellbeing of the group. That hurts us all. After careful consideration we have made a decision. If you cannot, or will not, be respectful and do what is required of you, then you will be ejected from this base.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“‘If a viper lives in your room and you wish to have a peaceful sleep, you must first chase it out.’”

“I don’t give a shit about Dali Rama; you still wouldn’t do that. You’re too much of a bleeding heart.”

“It’s not Dali
Lama
, it’s Buddha. And it is entirely up to you. Your fate lies in your own hands.”

“No, my life is in your hands and my fate your will. I didn’t choose to be here.”

“Very poetic. But as I recall I was against you coming with us, advice which some didn’t heed. Besides, I didn’t see anyone pulling an ear or twisting an arm forcing you to join us. You had freedom of choice, and therefore effective control over your own destiny.”

“Go ahead, kick me out.”

I questioned his new tactic. “
Really?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t matter what’s out there?”

“No.”

“You’re always daring me to do you harm. It’s as if you want to die.”

“That’s none of your damn business.”

“No, it
is
my business. All we have left in this world is each other. There’s no one that’s going to protect us except ourselves. You can’t change what’s happened. So why are you being self-destructive?”

“I told you to shut up.”

“No, you told me it was none of my business.”

“Now I’m telling you to shut up!”

Joe was becoming increasingly agitated. He moved toward me. Kermit tried to intervene, but I motioned for him to stand down. This was between Joe and I, and it had been festering for a long time.

I stood up to confront him. “Are you looking for another fight? It will only lead to more disappointment.”

He was in my face, goading me, pushing me, trying to provoke me into hurting him. When he realized that his tactic wasn’t going to work, he took a swing at me. I countered with simultaneous parrying and a hand trap. I followed by twisting his wrist and arm, forcing him to the floor in agony. I finished by applying nerve destruction to his forearm.

“Now that I have your attention, I think it’s time to tell me what crawled up your ass.” I continued twisting his arm, almost to the point of dislocation.

“I told you that is was none of your fucking business,” he gasped.

“Wrong answer. Why do you have a death wish?”

Still defiant he replied, “Fuck you.”

“You’re not my type. Now why?!” I pushed on his nerve harder.

Tears welled up in his eyes from the pain he was enduring. He grimaced with a twisted face, and then gasped, “It’s my business.”

“No, you made it our business when you brought it with you.”

“You should have left me in the tunnel.”

“Why, why should we have left you in the tunnel?”

He cried out, “Because I let him die.”

“
Who?
Who did you let die?” I demanded, applying more pressure to his nerve.

“My baby brother,” he moaned. “I killed him.”

I released my grip. Joe began to sob.

“It’s my fault. I should have saved him. But I closed the door.”

They say
the truth shall set you free
, a bastardization of John 8:32. However, I believe confession does not cleanse the soul nor does it give absolution. Accepting what you have done and accepting the consequences of your actions are the only way to shed your burden. Joe’s admission was far from burden lifting and far from my ability to console.

Joe had made a horrible, tragic mistake. In all likelihood, he would never forgive himself, and certainly never forget.

Someone having trouble coping with personal problems doesn’t need to feel alone, like he or she doesn’t matter, won’t be missed, or feel that there was no one in their life who would listen. To me, that is more of a tragedy than the mistake itself.

What should I have said to someone responsible for the death of a family member, when the person decided to commit suicide? Should I drag out the platitudes, or say something completely stupid? I had no idea.

“Joe, there is nothing I can say that’s going to make you feel better or change what you’ve done. However, you think killing yourself is going to make things right. You’re wrong. You don’t get off that easy. Take responsibility for your actions and atone for what you’ve done. I’m sorry for your loss, but you need to consider your new family. How do you think others are going to react to your suicide? Do you think no one will be negatively affected by it? Believe it or not, you’re worth more than you realize.”

“Why do you even care?” he asked, as he wiped the tears from his eyes.

“Oh, don’t confuse concern with caring. You and I are not friends, and probably never will be, but I see things from a broader viewpoint. We can’t stay down here forever. And when we leave, we’ll need to be a team if we’re going to survive. What you did, that’s something between you and your God. But what you do now is between you and the rest of us. So nut up and start acting like a team member.”

I had no idea if anything I said would deter him in his resolve to kill himself. But by letting him know that we relied on him for our survival, I hoped he would change his mind and become part of our group.

As Joe began his departure, Kermit grabbed his arm and pulled him close. He whispered in Joe’s ear, “We’ve all lost friends and family, son, but your marine corps core values go way beyond being in the marines. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Time to do your duty.”

I wasn’t sure if Kermit knew that I could hear his words of wisdom, but I hoped what he said would make a difference.

X. Devastation

June 8
th
. Joe’s drunken outburst and emotional breakdown was a result of his deep feelings of guilt in regard to his brother’s death. Time and isolation was the catalyst for his violent, destructive behavior.

People depended on varying amounts and intensities of social interaction to keep them happy, stable, and sane. Exposure to the natural world, which helped make life bearable, was emotionally, physically, and psychologically destructive when denied.

Our natural world had been denied, and though we tried to occupy ourselves with various activities and social interactions, the lack of natural world stimulus and purpose of being affected our group’s mental and physical health. We were experiencing anxiety, depression, and a feeling of being disconnected from the world, especially after we had watched, from the complex’s command center, the world plunge into chaos and destruction.

The global mortality rate from the pandemic was not known, but CNN reported that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that eighty to eighty-seven percent of the human population would contract the disease and die, either from the initial infection, or from the deaths caused by the catastrophic ruin and mayhem brought upon by those who had become the living dead. The doctor scoffed at the WHO
, stating, “They look at things on the bright side, not very scientific or realistic. Their mathematic models are based on erroneous data.”

The doctor’s projection was higher, over four billion,
which would leave nearly two billion survivors in the world. New York City was different. There were eight and a half million people in the five boroughs, the English and Irish accounting for one in fifty New Yorkers that might possess the delta-32 gene. Marisol calculated that there could be over fourteen thousand survivors, less any transmutes. Time would only tell, and for us time was an enemy. Something needed to be done to alleviate the boredom and anxiety, and I knew what to do.

XI. A Warrior’s Way

I stood before my new students like I would in any class that I had taught. I began by introducing myself in my kwoon given Cantonese name, Sui Lóng, and asked them to use this while in class. But the class was different from any I had taught. My students were not merely pupils, but people I had bonded with and cared about. We relied on one another for our survival.

My friends needed to learn as much as I could teach them in a short span of time. I wanted to defend the honors and the traditions of the various martial arts in which I was trained, for I may have been the last person who could carry on the warrior arts. I hoped I was worthy of the task.

* * *

I said, “You may ask why you need to learn martial arts since Master Sergeant Brown is instructing us on the proper use of a machine gun and a pistol, but what if you drop your weapon and you are unable to pick it up? Or if your enemy is too close? This is where hand-to-hand combat techniques will be vital to your survival. Stature and strength doesn’t matter. Every one of you can take down almost any opponent providing you execute the maneuver properly. Marisol, you could lay the Sarge out, put him right to the mat.”

“No way.”

“
Way!”
I responded. “Bruce Lee once said, ‘Using no way as way’. Which means
don’t have preconceived notions about anything
. In
Jeet Kune Do
it is efficiency, directness and simplicity. In
Muay Thai
it’s ‘be fast. Be accurate. Be powerful’. If you combine the two philosophies, you can become almost invincible.”

I turned to Marisol. “Marisol. You think you can’t take down Kermit because you’re smaller and he’s stronger. Is that a correct assumption?”

“Si,”
she confirmed.

“When I studied in the Philippines some years back, there was this seventeen-year-old girl. She was about five-feet tall, ninety-eight pounds, wore her hair in a butch-cut, and had no chest at all. She looked like an eleven-year-old boy. Well, me being nineteen years old at the time, cocky and arrogant, the teacher thought I needed to be taught a lesson, and rightfully so. So he matched me up against this girl in a stick fight.”

I twirled my
bastóns
, which had been fashioned by Corporal Drukker and were made out of the handle of a push broom.

“The girl made me her bitch, not once, but
twice
that day. As we made our bows I boldly told her, ‘Girly boy, you’re goin’ down!’ Whereupon she proceeded to repeatedly beat me on every part of my body. Once she got bored with that, she knocked me out. When I awoke I was so badly battered that I needed to be carried to my room. It took her less than two minutes to completely humiliate me in front of my fellow students.”

“Yeah, but she was a gangsta girl,” Marisol blurted out. “I’m not.”

I responded with, “You’ve completely missed the point. Most women and men become victims,
why?
Because they don’t know how to protect themselves, not because they can’t. With the right training you can take almost anyone down. Even if you’re a woman.”

David raised his hand.

“Yeah, David.”

“You said she defeated you twice that day.”

“No, I said she made me her bitch twice that day.” I tried to change the subject but Marisol wasn’t going to have it.

“What happened? How did you become her double bitch?”

“It’s not appropriate in front of you girls.”