Stop the war or giant amoebas will eat you
by Richard Peabody
[ fiction - may 03 ]
"Just shoot him. The world will applaud you." - Kelina Gotman
Mock Iraq war stories started appearing in printouts that were passed around the entire high school. A handful here. A handful there. Each was only a page or two at best. Each had the heading: Yellow Rose. The hard copy ended up wadded in balls, left on floors, stuffed in lockers, or swirled about in the after school breeze. But more and more copies of Yellow Rose seemed to be taken seriously, circulated from hand to hand, passed around the community to be discussed over lunch, over coffee. Everybody had a theory but nobody could figure out who was writing them. Nobody had a clue. And so they kept coming, as relentless as the 24/7-war news that threatened to pummel even the most dovish of the doves senseless with violence and veracity. Some students loved the bulletins and sided totally with the parody, with the anti-war sentiments. Other louder voices called for the head of the person brazen enough to try to rewrite history. They were furious and wanted to stop whoever was behind the mock news bulletins by any means necessary.
Yellow Rose #1
Bursts of light illuminated the southern horizon of Dallas, the thunder reverberating in the distance. Then, with method and fury, waves of explosions rolled across the heart of Dallas-Fort Worth tonight, shattering the garrisons of George W Bush's three decade-rule and sending flames and black plumes of smoke into the sky.
In a three-hour blitz that at times brought a new blast every 10 seconds, Chinese PLA forces devastated many of the symbols of Bush's government: a presidential ranch, the baseball stadium in nearby Arlington that once housed his Texas Rangers and a security bunker.
The detonations shook buildings and cracked windows miles from the epicenter of the attacks, and smoke smothered the city in an acrid haze. Soon after the strike began, sirens of emergency vehicles wailed through the deserted, but still-lit streets, although there were no immediate reports on the number of casualties. Texas radio was knocked off the air temporarily.
The assault was by far the most intense since the conflict began Thursday. After two previous air strikes, which both lasted less than an hour, residents had left their barricaded homes stockpiled with food and gingerly returned to the streets. But tonight's attack, beginning shortly after 8pm, and lasting late into the night, was more powerful and wider in scope. The city promptly became a fragile and vacant shell.
Reilly didn't want to die. The idea that a dirty bomb could takeout his hometown and kill him and his family was tough to grapple with. His mom was here, his dad in San Francisco. Maybe he should ask them if he could switch coasts? He still had a year of high school to go. Decisions, decisions.
Besides, Reilly thought, all you had to do was make a bomb the size of a cell phone. Security never checked cell phones when he went to a concert or to see the Wizards play ball. They never bothered to look closely. You simply held your cell phone up. Surely this must have occurred to some of the bad guys by now?
English class. Miss Byrne was droning on and on about French history. They were reading Dickens. She'd been at the January 18th march. 500,000 hit the streets around the Capitol steps. It was freezing. 15 degrees. Reilly's toes never did warm up. His Doc Martens no match for the chill. The crowd stunned Reilly.
Surely this would have an impact on the world? When the shoulder-to-shoulder marchers got to the top of the hill by the Library of Congress, he strayed off to the side to rest. It was much too cold to sit on the icy marble so he leaned against a doorway and watched the people keep coming.
And there was Miss Byrne. "Like something out of Dickens ehh Reilly?" It was totally out of context seeing her amid the crowd. They were reading A Tale of Two Cities. Reilly found it pretty slow going. He hadn't been paying a lot of attention. He'd been much more interested in the copy of Infinite Jest his dad had sent him for his 17th birthday. Still, he waved back and said, "Yeah," though he had no idea what she meant.
Now she was making jokes about Freedom Fries and the ridiculous notion that somebody in Louisiana was putting forth a proposal to change the name of the French Quarter in New Orleans to "Freedom Quarter". None of his other teachers were this cool.
In the first dream Reilly was walking and walking through winding streets. There were hordes of people and they only stopped when they reached a long line outside the Supreme Court. Somehow he had a pass and was led up the steps to the front of the line, and into the courtroom that morphed out larger and larger, into something like the Roman coliseum, until he found himself seated while war criminals were tried. This wasn't anything like the European History Current Events class he'd taken; there was no Milosevic here. In the hot seat were Bush administration folks like Elliot Abrams, Williams Kristol, Condoleezza Rice,
Harvey Pitt, Tom DeLay, and radio talk show host Mike Savage.
But the main fixture in the center of the courtroom, which kept shifting back and forth from having a roof to having no roof, was a judge's bench almost two-stories high. Once prisoners were found guilty they were escorted out the back of the building. Curiosity got the best of Reilly and soon he was flying or floating really, outside above the walls and into the courtyard where a noisy crowd of several hundred thousand people had gathered. Every eye was fixed in the center of the courtyard as the prisoners were led up the dais to a gigantic three-story scaffold.
Reilly was watching Canadian TV on C-Span. They were interviewing Iraqi civilians about the recent air strikes and the death toll in greater Baghdad when his cell vibrated in his jeans. He would never admit to feeling a bit of a responsive buzz. "Yeah?" It was Amy. Life was looking up.
"It's you isn't it?"
"Maybe?" "Don't play coy, Reilly. You're too virginal to work it." "So? So what?" Could he eat chips and salsa and talk to Amy? She was acheerleader. She was beautiful. They said hello every day but that was about it. He'd been playing with a solitary chip since he answered the phone. To dip or not to dip? To chew? She was so hot. Did he dare keep eating?
"Don't you think it's a bit much?" "So's Bush's folly." "I just don't believe you can repay evil for evil." "Why not?" He waited, danced the chip across his lips. Tasted the salt. Maybe?
"Cuz you have better things to do with your time? Because you're creative. You can write."
What a trip. This must be how David Foster Wallace felt. Praise. Groupies. What next? Chips? Definitely chips."So I want to know." "Wanna know what?" He plunged the chip into his mouth and the chomping began."Why'd you do it?"
Yellow Rose #2
One of the main targets was the Bush ranch complex, which stretches along the west bank of the Trinity river. A faux western town sits at the center of the sprawling complex, built in the 1950s, that houses apartments for some of Bush's loyalists and camps for the Republican Party elite. Missile strikes left at least two buildings in the complex burning,although not the ranch itself. At least five missiles struck the nearby headquarters of Texaco. Even after the attack, the ranch complex remained brightly lit, a lamp casting a ghostly brightness through billowing white smoke.
The Republican Party headquarters was also struck, as was the Heritage Foundation office, a camp on Dallas's southern outskirts where both Republican Party members and regular army units are stationed. Under a full moon, the fires burned for hours and clouds of smoke drifted over downtown Dallas.
Air raid sirens sounded at about 8pm, but the first strikes were visible only as dozens of flashes in the distance. Less than an hour later, the full brunt of the attack struck the heart of Dallas. For 20 minutes, explosions went off every few seconds. A lull followed, then another round of attacks. That pattern continued until about 11pm.
The strikes appeared to target military installations and symbols of Bush's rule. Electricity remained on in Dallas-Fort Worth throughout the evening, suggesting that the city's fragile and precarious infrastructure had not been targeted. Despite the attack and Chinese advances elsewhere in Texas, the government maintained a confident face and kept control.
Official statements insisted victory was imminent, even as signs of amilitary defeat grew. In what is becoming a trademark refrain, Information Minister Ari Fleischer heaped insults on China.
"You consider them a superpower. Well, this is a disgrace, a complete disgrace. They are a superpower of villains," he said, dressed in leather chaps and a black Stetson. "Genghis Khan is the typical Beijing official these days."
He denied that Texas had lost any territory today to Chinese forces and insisted that the government retained control of El Paso. He suggested Chinese disinformation was behind reports of the surrender of Texas soldiers in the west.
"We are experienced. We know them very well," Fleischer told reporters. "We know their tricks, their tactics. We know everything about them." Asked whether the government was becoming disheartened, he answered: "Our morale is in us, in our resilience, in our good understanding of the situation, in our deep belief that we are the just side and they are the villains."
Reilly attended his first peace march in October and the world moved. It was awe-inspiring. Giant puppets, amazing signs. The colorful outpouring of humanity. Grannies and infants in Baby Bjorn's. Babies in strollers and old hippies. College professors, students, workers, people of color. He chanted, "This is what democracy looks like" with 200,000 people.
At home later he watched CNN and was dismayed to hear the city officials decry the anti war protests. Saying only 10,000 to 30,000 people had gathered. Who did their math? It was like the polls that claimed 70% of America believed in Bush and the possibility of war. That was impossible. It continued to run against everything Reilly knew to be true. Who was conducting these polls? It sounded rigged to make Bush look good. Too much like the Florida election debacle.
Reilly's e-mail was the usual mix: pleas for money from anti war groups, info from Moveon.org, and Bush cartoons that portrayed the president as either a Nazi or Mad magazine's Alfred E Neuman. He also found a new batch of protest pix from the San Francisco march that his dad had sent.
Frodo failed - Bush has the ring
The Only Bush I'd Trust Is My Own (complete with graphic)
Weapons of Mass Distraction
No Blood for Oil
Bombing for Peace is like Fucking for Virginity
Drop Bush Not Bombs
Bichons Against Bush (as in the dog Bichon Frise)
Eat More Pretzels (Motherfucker!)
Appoint an Oil President - Get an Oil War
But Reilly's favorite and the one that almost made him drop his laptop he was laughing so hard was a placard carried by a 10-year-old boy, which read:
Stop the War or Giant Amoebas Will Eat You.
That was the best. Absolutely the best. He'd watched a sorry old sci-fi film called The Angry Red Planet with his baby boomer dad. Special effects were almost nonexistent - a solarized giant Martian rat spider was the best thing in the film - but watching the giant amoebae suck one of the crew into its Jell-O stomach and digest him was hysterical. After that viewing disaster, Reilly had rented the remake of The Blob so his dad could see a much more realistic monster digest a ton of people.
Yellow Rose #3
On the second day of the war, scenes in the capital of Austin ranged from the wrenching to the theatrical. Ari Flesicher was joined at his news conference by Colin Powell. Powell wore a flak jacket, to which he had strapped a hunting knife and four ammunition clips, and carried a pistol on his side. To the delight of photographers, he swung a pistol above his head with his finger on the trigger.
"Some of you might wonder why I have a Colt 45 in my hand and why I'm wearing a flak jacket. We have all in Texas pledged never to drop our weapon, to relinquish our weapon, until the day of victory," he said.Powell shouted: "Remember the Alamo!" The mood was far different in the streets of Dallas, a city of almost 2million, where residents enjoyed a precarious period of calm in the morning, before the evening's terrifying fusillade. In contrast to previous days in which Dallas was shadowed by an unsettled calm, signs of vibrancy returned in the daylight hours, and residents seemed emboldened that the air strikes Thursday appeared to be restrained by comparison with what many had expected.
"Before the war, the Chinese said they were going to hit us every day with 4,000 missiles, 24 hours a day," said Rabbi Asher Goldstein. "People went home and hid. But what happened is the opposite. Thank God, praise be to God."
Savannah, Reilly's kid sister, kept a candlelight vigil on their front porch. Every morning he was amazed: one, that there house hadn't burned down in the night; and two, at the spooky-looking piles of wax.Last night when he got home there was a tiny Pooh lamp plugged into anextension cord that fed under the storm door. His mom had been worried about the candles.
"Do you have any idea how expensive candles are?" she said. His mom wasmaking a batch of power pancakes - cottage cheese added to the mix. "Oh, did you see my sign?""What sign?" "Look," she said, and she led him to the window getting batter on his ear,and pointed in the front yard. How had he missed it in the dark?
"War Is Not the Answer." Blue words on a white background.
"Where did you get it?" "The Quakers. Which reminds me..." "What?"
"When are you going to do something to get this warmonger out of the WhiteHouse?" "I marched." If she only knew the truth, Reilly thought. "Yeah, well that was a few weeks ago. What have you done for me lately?"
"C'mon, mom, gimme a break." "Yeah? Well, you're a smart kid. You can do something else. I'm sure youwill. And oh. That reminds me. Have you seen this?"
Reilly's jaw dropped open. His mom pushed a copy of Yellow Rose across the counter to him. Butter had stained one corner.
"Err, no. What is it?" Did his voice betray him?
"The sound of one voice crying in the wilderness. I found it on a table at Whole Foods this morning. Now Reilly dear, you could do something like this. Become a pamphleteer. I want you to take it and read it."
"Sure mom." Reilly took it to his room. Plopped it on a pile in his drawer of about 200 more copies.
Dream voices keep the count. Reilly is back in the courtyard watching the crowd chant: "Twenty-two. Twenty-two." The rich, the fat cats, are led to where mistress guillotine presides, led like sheep for shearing. A pretty head is held aloft by long blonde hair. Ann Coulter. Laughter ripples through the crowd. CEOs and chairmen. Suits. Extravagant Italian suits. All pomp and circuitous lies within the spirit of the law. Laws invented by the rich, for the rich, and nobody but the rich. And yet we knit and count "Twenty-three. Twenty-three." Why not 203? 2003? Mistress guillotine is rapacious. She'll lick you and kiss you and drink your blood. She has a real appetite for skin.
Here comes Karen Hughes. Richard Perle. Now Cheney. His wife talking, beseeching. Snicker-snak. Heads roll. Drop into the basket, the blood seeping through the weave. Now Newt. Now Rush. Sardonic masks. They came, they saw, they got down on their knees and revealed their lily-white necklines to the silver glint. The law of gravity. That shuddering fall of steel rimmed with bloody splatter.
Yellow Rose #4
While spectacular high-tech air strikes in Dallas captured the world's attention, what was happening in the rest of Texas yesterday revealed a more aggressive, even daring, side of today's Chinese military.
Special Operations troops, taking a far more important role in the invasion than they did during the war in Tibet, seized an airfield and other key points in the western desert, making it much less likely that Texas will be able to use Minuteman or Cruise missile launching pads to strike back. In the north, a smaller force of Special Operations troops worked near Amarillo and Lubbock to create a northern front.
Most significantly, from the south, several columns of armored troops drove deep into Texas, racing more than 10 miles toward Austin.
"Reilly, Reilly. Get out of bed. Somebody stole my sign. They stole my peace sign right out of our yard.
"Mom, it's okay. That's happening all over. We'll just get another one."
"But you don't know how long it took to get that one. I was on the phone forever and finally I just drove down to the Quaker meeting house at Dupont Circle and picked one up."
"It'll be okay."
"God I hate whoever did that."
"Ashcroft."
"What?"
"I'll bet Ashcroft drives around in a long black stretch limo late at night with a team of sign ripper uppers."
His mom laughed. Reilly always liked the way she laughed. Her entire face wrinkled up. It was kind of Meg Ryanish squinty eyed. Nothing like Julia Roberts and her toothy hyena head rolls. No, making mom laugh always made Reilly feel warm and fuzzy. Something he hadn't seen enough of since the divorce. Reason enough to go on living.
Yellow Rose #5
A column of 100 to 150 Texas tanks broke out of the besieged city of Houston tonight as Chinese troops continued to barrage Texans with artillery fire, Chinese military officials said. The fighting moved outside of Houston tonight as the column of tanks poured out of the city and headed southeast toward Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. The tanks were immediately pounded by Chinese aircraft. The attack continued late into the night.
A day after Chinese military officials declared Enron positions insideHouston a legitimate military target and prepared to enter the city, it was still unclear there was a civilian uprising against the rule of President George W Bush, as Chinese officials reported Tuesday.
Reilly could taste blood. His face was skinned from where he'd slid across the blacktop. Somebody had slammed him hard.
"Rumor has it that you're the little dickhead who writes this Texas crap." Bruno. Death metal drummer. He of the bald head and black leather. People were beginning to gather. Reilly managed to pull himself up to a knee; the damage didn't feel too awful. He could live with it. But fighting Bruno was suicide."Who says?" "It's you. You know it. I know it. They all know it." "So? Don't you believe in Freedom of Speech?"
"Not when my brother's in Kuwait. Not when some little ass wipe is writing treason.""Treason?" "That's right. Now get up." This was delivered with menacing fingers."First I'm going to make you eat this crap," he said, rolling a copy of Yellow Rose into a tight wand, "and then I'm gonna beat the fuck out of your faggot ass self." And then somebody pushed Bruno from behind. "What the?" It was Rafael. Rafael Ramirez. Nose guard on the football team. His green and orange Miami football jersey blocking out the sun. This was more like it. A battle of behemoths."I've got no beef with you, Rafael. This is between me and dickhead here." "You don't get it, Bruno? I'd rather fight Republicans than eat." "Some pacifist." "Since when do you have to be a pacifist to be against the war?" "You guys are both traitors." "You know, the pope says this war is a sin. That's good enough for a good Catholic boy like me." "My brother's over there." "I'm sorry, vato. I hope they bring him home. But I don't buy that America right or wrong crap."
The executioners in the dream are masked. One mans the long nylon rope that starts the blade in motion. The other has the more gruesome chore of hoisting heads for the crowd's reaction, then clearing the cadavers from their position, before heaving them below to the waiting cart. The stack of bodies is getting impressively high. Crows have appeared. For some reason Cypress Hill is playing on a stage in the square.
Here comes Wolfowitz. Karl Rove. Whomp. Whomp. Heads roll. Blood flies high. Legs twitch and jerk. The crowd roars. Tom Ridge is next. Then William J. Bennett. The mob wants to build a tower of Republican dead. Yet they save one of the biggest roars for Ashcroft. One executioner must sit on Ashcroft's legs to keep him pinned in place for his close shave.
"It was an experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if you changed a few words around. That's the original idea any way."
"Really?"
"Yep. But the thing started growing out of control."
Reilly thought of the bagpiper. There's an instrument you could never play in a group house, or an apartment. Like a tuba. The guy was playing the bagpipes out in the middle the grassy knoll between two lanes of the E Street Expressway. Obviously a George Washington student. Practicing to the morning rush hour. Reilly had wanted to come back at dusk after the march to see if the bagpiper was still there.
"Look, I'm trying to decide if I want to help you or not. I need to know that you're doing this because you believe you're doing the right thing. That it's not just some pointless intellectual exercise." Reilly must have misheard. Did cheerleader Amy just say what he thought she'd said?" I'm serious Reilly. I want to help. I think this is an awesome thing you're doing. Forcing people to wear the other shoe."
Reilly wasn't sure that was what he was doing. He was just playing with words. In some ways it was only a game. In others he knew he was becoming more and more emotional about the war. The inevitable civilian casualties. And he was perturbed by the smoke screen military jargon: friendly fire, collateral damage, embedded correspondents, et al.
"Well, Amy, what do you say we go see Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine?"
Yellow Rose #6
"Love your enemies" - Jesus
Only one member of Congress has a child serving in Iraq.
70% of members of Congress do not own passports. Because they never intend to leave this country. Why would you want to after all? America has everything, right?
None of Bush's administration has served in the military during wartime save Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld.
Banditry and lawlessness appear to be spreading through some areas in southwestern Texas as Chinese troops sweep the countryside for remnants of Texas forces and remain at a stalemate with fighters in Houston, Texas's largest city.
Villagers in the area now complain of roving bands of armed men who steal tractors, hijack trucks, loot factories and terrorize residents with near impunity.
At the same time, Texas paramilitary fighters of the Charlton Heston Brigade inside Houston fired mortars and machine guns today on about 1,000 civilians trying to leave the besieged city, forcing them to retreat.
Amy joined Reilly at the March 15th peace rally. There weren't as many people but it was a lot warmer and everything was beautiful until they made the turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue and into the teeth of the pro-war rally. He'd heard right-wingers argue that the peace marchers were all communists, but when the odd mix of white bread Republicans and vets began shouting at them he thought it was hilarious. Save for the hatred. The US was so totally half and half on every subject that it was getting to be like the Balkans. "Don't they realize that Castro is the last communist?"
"It's hysterical." "Except that they'd like to kill us." Their walk back to the Washington Monument was very sobering. They grabbed some coffee at Starbucks and took the Metro back home to Virginia. About the time students were getting off at Foggy Bottom, Amy repeated her offer, "I want to help." "Help what?" "Don't be stupid, Reilly. I know it's you. Let me help. I can do the graphics.Spruce up your typefaces. Help you hand them out at the next peace march."
Yellow Rose #7
Swiftly moving columns of Chinese tanks and armored vehicles pushed halfway to Dallas today as Chinese forces farther south tightened their grip on Houston, Texas, and allied warplanes and ships rained bombs and missiles on the Texas capital in a day-and-night pounding.
The fast-paced Chinese invasion prompted hundreds of Texans to surrender and thousands of others to shed their uniforms and head home, said Gen. Qiao Chang, the overall commander of Chinese forces in Texas, who boasted in a briefing that the military campaign will be "unlike any other in history."The Army's 38th Infantry Division, which has been barreling through thedesert in southwestern Texas with tanks and fighting vehicles since Thursday, had pierced 150 miles into Texas by nightfall--about half the distance between the Mexican border and Dallas, Chinese military officials said. Army sources said the division's lead elements, moving on during the night, clashed with Texas troops 45 miles southeast of Midland, a city that is important to Bush and the oil industry.
"Do you think any of these people have kids?""Bush has the twins." "Besides them?" "You want to know what I think?" "Shoot." "I think most of the Bush administration isn't really human. I think they're demons disguised in flesh. Reptilian invaders from the demon realm.""You've got to stop watching Lord of the Rings - today." "Can I ask you something?" "Sure." Now what? Reilly was worried. "Why China?" "What?" "I mean why did you choose them? Why my people?"Reilly hadn't made the connection. The Chinese just seemed like the obvious aggressors in a piece like this, a piece that would hold a mirror up to what the USA was doing to the Muslim world. But he said, "Mexico seemed too unbelievable and Canada was too South Park.""You know I'm Chinese." "Yeah, of course." "Amy's my adopted name." "Okay." "My real name is Zhen." "Jun? Like fun? What's it mean?" "Precious." "Wow." "Reilly, I want you to call me Zhen from now on."
Yellow Rose #8
Units of the 38th Infantry Division barreled deeper into Texas in several columns, one of which encountered resistance from Texas fighters near College Station. But other columns of the 40th Infantry Division speeding through the desert farther to the west, met no resistance as they pushed toward rendezvous points en route to the Texas capital of Austin."We will try to force the Bush regime to capitulate as quickly as possiblewith minimum damage to civilians, the Chinese military spokesman told reporters. "There is not a desire to destroy Texas. What we are going to do is liberate Texas from a dictator."
Reilly listened to The Flaming Lips on the Jeep's CD player. He was parked in front of the library. A slow moving light in the sky distracted him and then as it proved to be a small plane he found himself pondering that if the aliens were so smart why were they always taking farmers and cowhands and lonely women driving cross-country? Why didn't they just come down to Earth right this second and snatch Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Ashcroft. And hell yes, take Saddam, too. Nobody ever said Saddam was a good guy. Just take the lot of them off and give them the anal probe for a couple of decades. The world would be at peace by day's end.
The door opened and Zhen piled into the front seat. "Go, go, go, go," she said breathless. Laughing, as the door slammed.
"So your idea of helping is what? Getting us arrested for defacing public property?"
"Oh Reilly, you're so lame. You do this great thing and you don't wantpeople to read it.""At the library?" "At the library, on the library. Any and everywhere."Zhen was taping copies of Yellow Rose on doors, walls, staple-gunning others to telephone poles.
Reilly had to admit that Zhen's new design was spectacular. She'd added desk-topped maps of Texas with the invasion almost totally paralleling the US invasion of Iraq. She printed it out on her father's law firm's super duper color printer and the results were very zippy and made early attempts look naïve. Now here she was helping him distribute them. The initial print-run of 300 copies for Yellow Rose #1 was now dwarfed by the free printing possibilities Zhen could gather at her father's office. They had 3,000 copies to unload now. So why, since he was rubbing elbows with Zhen, and staring at her immaculate face for hours daily, why, did he feel like it was time to quit?
Yellow Rose #9
Commanders declared that Galveston, the port city on the Gulf of Mexico, was secure. Chinese officials now face the logistics challenge of housing prisoners of war. As of this morning, the Chinese military said it had taken 8,900 prisoners, about 4,000 of them by the Commandos.
Reilly waits at Teaism at Dupont Circle for Zhen to show up. It's Saturday and they're having sushi. He's totally dismayed when Rafael slides onto a bench beside her. "What's up?" Rafael says. "Hey." Reilly looks to Zhen for guidance and finding none he studies his menu. "Rafael knows," Zhen says. "Knows what?" Reilly says. "C'mon, vato, I knew it was you ever since Bruno came after you. I think it's great what you're doing." Reilly makes as if to go, to stand, but Zhen puts a hand on his arm. "Please Reilly, hear him out. He really wants to help."
"I've got a thou saved up. My brother and I always play slots once a year at Atlantic City and we made a killing last weekend. I'll give it all to you for this thing you're doing. No strings."
"We can print 5,000 copies per issue," Zhen says. Her smile is big enough to get lost in.
Yellow Rose #10
Screams echoed throughout the Red Cross hospital. Two Texas women lay bleeding with shrapnel wounds in their arms and legs. A row over a dead woman, another, two women sobbing, the sisters of one of the women. Their husbands and brothers bodies lying dead outside. The dead children.
"The Chinese did it," said an angry Texan from the crowd of onlookers. "They shot us down like dogs." The Chinese military doctor who dressed their wounds had no idea what had transpired. "Civilian casualties have been light up to now," he said. "They come with the territory."
Zhen is loudly delivering a monologue to Reilly and anybody else in earshot in the school cafeteria. "They haven't found any weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has no air force. They've fired what? 6 missiles since the war started? The US fighting Iraq is like Mike Tyson in the ring with an infant."
Reilly can feel his cell phone vibrating. He takes a look. It's mom.
"Dear, can you come home? Right now?"
"Sure, mom. What's wrong?"
"Savannah had a run-in with the sign ripper uppers."
"What?"
"Just come home."
Zhen runs after him to the Jeep and they haul back to Reilly's house. It's only a few blocks away.
"Why didn't you go to high school at Woodlawn?" she asks him as they drive past the other nearby high school campus. The boho artsy students sunning themselves by the front drive.
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Why didn't I go to Woodlawn?"
There's an Arlington County policeman in the yard talking to his mom. She has her arms across her chest. Savannah is nowhere to be seen. As Reilly and Zhen walk up, the policeman looks them over and returns to his white car.
"What's going on?" Reilly says.
Reilly is enveloped in a bear hug. Embarrassed, he manages to gasp, "Mom, this is Zhen."
"Oh hi," his mom releases him and wipes a tear. And then much to Reilly's shock his mom and Zhen hug.
"Savannah's inside. Mrs Novak is eating Popsicles with her. She'll be fine. She was playing jump rope on the sidewalk when a car stopped out front and some kid hopped the fence to steal my sign. Savannah yelled and the baldheaded kid ran over her, knocked her flat. I'm afraid she got a pair of bloody knees and a boo-boo head, but she'll be okay. I'm not sure if I'll survive though."
"Did you say baldheaded?" Zhen asked.
Later, after dinner, after Savannah's gone to bed, Reilly's mom knocks on her son's aluminum foil wrapped door.
"She's cute."
"Zhen?"
"Yes. Is she helping you with Yellow Rose?"
"How long have you known?"
"You gave it away over pancakes. Besides, you always print in Garamond."
"You're not mad?"
"I'm proud of you. But I realize a lot of people are going to get pretty steamed about this. I'd hate for you to get hurt."
"Mom?"
"Yes, honey?"
"I'm thinking about quitting."
"Cuz of today?"
"It just feels like we're not allowed to protest what the government is doing. Even the Washington Post is supporting the war."
"Well, the hell with them. I'll cancel our subscription tomorrow. We can't afford the daily NY Times but I think we have enough for the Sunday edition. Good enough?"
"Thanks, mom."
"And Reilly."
"Yeah?"
"If you want to quit doing Yellow Rose that's okay, too."
Yellow Rose #11
In the west, Mexican troops have joined their Chinese allies. Armored columns are streaming across the Mexican border at Brownsville and Laredo and are converging on San Antonio. The Mexican forces have met little resistance from Texas forces thus far. Additional Mexican forces have taken over the occupation of El Paso freeing Chinese troops for the push on to Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Now that Rafael is part of the team he suggests some changes.
"Mexico is Turkey, see."
"What?"
"Turkey wouldn't allow us to invade from their border with Iraq but now I'm going to make Mexico join in. That Alamo quote inspired me."
Reilly felt sluggish. Was he really tired or simply tired of maintaining his big secret?
"Look Rafael, I think I'm going to bag out."
"What? You can't bag this was your idea."
"I had my fun. I got my point across. Right now I'm pretty depressed by how helpless I feel about this country."
"But vato, you're doing something. You're doing something real..."
Zhen came around the corner with a very long face.
"What's up, girlfriend?" Rafael asked.
"Bruno's brother died. On one of the choppers."
Rafael put an arm around Zhen. She had tears in her eyes. Reilly felt empty. Yellow Rose wasn't real like this. Dying was real.
"That's it then," Reilly said, "I'm done."
Yellow Rose #12
Houston is still under siege. Texas army regulars and members of Bush's Davy Crockett and Jessie Helms militia groups have interspersed themselves among civilians, leaving Chinese commandos wondering aloud whether they will have to enter the city and face house-to-house combat with hardcore fighters.
After short-lived Texan resistance, the Mexican 2nd Infantry Division column seized the city of San Antonio, along with two bridges traversing Cibolo Creek, opening a route for thrusts toward Austin on both sides of the waterway, the officials said. The other column raced farther west, pausing to battle pockets of Texas defenders before pushing on in the direction of San Angelo.
At school the next day, Reilly felt sad and just as depressed by world events but freed up somehow. Less paranoid. More relaxed. He'd stayed up most of the night finishing A Tale of Two Cities. Now his dreams made more sense. Like he was remembering the future in some weird time bendable way.
Zhen found him already sitting in his English class. Today was the big Dickens test. She handed him the latest installment of Yellow Rose. There was a great map with big red troop arrows splashing across the Mexican border.
"So, what do you think?"
"Feels kind of nice to have something live on after you're through working on it," Reilly began.
"I'm not going to help Rafael with the next installment. I respect your opting out too much to continue. But..."
"But what?" Reilly watched Zhen's eyes. She glanced away and then quickly back. Her eyes were a warm brown, so brown.
"I hope you'll use that amazing brain of yours to come up with something else to show your love for the world."
"That's what my mom says."
"I am most definitely not your mom," Zhen said, and then leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Before Reilly could respond she'd breezed out of the room.
Miss Byrne placed a copy of the English test in Reilly's upraised right hand like she was passing him a baton. "Okay, lover boy, time to get to work." And then she chuckled. "You know, Reilly, if we survive this war it'll take 50 years to fix the damage this administration has done to the country. You'll have lots of time to make it better."
Reilly smiled. The splendiferous Zhen had kissed him. Time stopped. And then he put the test down and read the first several questions.
1.) How far would you go to obtain revenge on someone or some group who destroyed your family?
2.) Can you achieve justice through revenge?
3.) What is justice?
4.) How does our society treat those who achieve revenge?
Compared to secretly doing Yellow Rose and worrying constantly about getting in trouble this test was going to be a breeze.
The bloodthirsty dream crowd has almost grown weary of the endless parade of Republicans. There's a certain sameness to the routine by now. Another key Reagan or Papa Bush crony or henchman is brought out to the dais and beheaded with numbing regularity. There are the occasional flourishes to spice things up - Columnist George Will asks for a blindfold; Kathleen Harris claims she's pregnant and pleads for her life. Reilly finds it amusing that she'd use the Chicago defense. The crowd is not amused. They have long memories. Of course G Gordon Liddy makes a grab for a gun, only to be wrestled to the ground. He dies weeping. But make no mistake - a druggy sort of tedium has set in. People are starting to get drunk, bored, unruly. And then in the gathering gloom anticipation ignites the crowd when it realizes there are only a few key figures that remain. And as George W Bush is led out into the courtyard the cameras of the paparazzi ignite the lazy Washington, DC honeysuckle night with explosive pops and flashes, enough to momentarily resemble the anti-aircraft fireworks in the sky over Baghdad. Seconds later the nightmare is over.
