SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

I stared into his eyes. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to lose my arms. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me beg. I didn’t want to do so many things. Most importantly, I didn’t want to see the smile of satisfaction on the bastard that was about to kill me, so I closed my eyes.

I heard gunshots. Blam! Blam! Blam!

The blades came free.

My eyes snapped open.

He backed away from me and turned. As he did, I saw Burgess holding the pistol I’d given him in two hands, his legs in a wide stance. Then the Jack ran off, too fast to see.

I fell to my knees.

Burgess ran toward me.

As did Gomer, who was right behind him.

They supported me so I didn’t fall on my face. Both shoulders burned with pain.

A cohort of guards moved past.

“I brought the cavalry,” Gomer said. He glanced over my shoulder. “Looks like you made a mess.”

“Don’t know what they wanted, but they’re not going to get it now.”

Gomer called for a first aid kit and one of the guards threw it at him. He caught it and began to bandage my wounds.

“What about the ceremony?” I asked.

“Major Harold was a little slow on the uptake. Wouldn’t let us disturb it even though I explained that something bad was about to happen.”

“And did it? Did anything bad happen?”

He grinned. “You should have seen it, sir. Golda Meier, Prime Minister of Israel, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, Vice President Gerald Ford, and a bunch of people I didn’t know but whose faces I’d seen on the news, all got up in the middle of the ceremony and began to take off their clothes. Ford hugged Kissinger and began to kiss the back of his neck.” Gomer couldn’t stifle his laughter. “It was ridiculous. One moment everyone was being serious listening to the president’s warlock do the Cremation of Care and the next they were acting out a scene of Roman debauchery.”

I could only imagine and I managed to smile. “What happened next?”

“Remi Calhoun dispelled it with a flick of his hand.”

I nodded to Burgess. “That’s what a Level VII can do. You make it there and you’re the president’s personal warlock.”

I could see Burgess take on a dreamy look.

A shadow passed over us.

Gomer stiffened as a blade pierced his back, the tip coming out his chest.

Burgess was lifted off the ground.

The Jack bounded twenty feet away, then stopped and turned, Burgess’s throat gripped in his left hand.

“Give me my brother,” Rehor said.

“I can’t,” I said, a spell beginning to form.

“Then he dies.”

“No!” I screamed, losing the frame of the spell.

Burgess’s eyes widened and his mouth opened into a scream as Rehor’s blade sliced deep through his neck.

Then Rehor was gone, melting into the night, the only proof he’d been there my two dying men.

Gomer grabbed at his neck, his fingers curling like the legs of dead spiders as they feebly tried to stop the blood flow. His mouth made movements as if he were trying to cast a spell he’d never learned. Healing was for Level Vs. I could heal, but I was too weak to heal them both. I could barely move. I could barely even frame the spell. But I managed. And as I laid my hand on Gomer, I watched Burgess die, all of his dreams of becoming something great feeding the ground in bright red blood.

EPILOGUE

July 27, 1970

Morning

Sunlight streamed through the windows of our San Francisco offices. Moma Told Me Not To Come by Three Dog Night played softly on the radio. I remembered when Gomer, Burgess and I had sung the words on our way to The Bohemian Grove almost three weeks ago. We’d all been different them.

Gomer came in and placed a stack of personnel files on my desk. It was my task to replace a boy who couldn’t be replaced. I wanted another American Indian, but there weren’t many in the program.

My arms still ached, even though Remi had come and healed me. After back briefing him about the mission, he’d nodded and admitted that he would have done little different under the circumstances. That we’d lost Burgess was unfortunate and he promised that the president would personally sign a letter to be sent to the family. Then he’d firmly asked me to leave, stating that the events of The Bohemian Grover were not my affair.

I could thumb my nose at a random Deputy Secretary of the Air Force, but Remi was my ultimate superior. What he said was law as long as I wanted to be a part of things. For a moment, I’d considered tossing it all away. But I’d discovered on the long drive back from Monte Rio with Burgess’s body in the back seat that I had a new focus. I had a new mission. Rehor was out there and I’d find and kill him, even if it meant that I myself would die.

I sighed and hummed the last words to the song, then addressed the pile of files. I needed to find a special person — one capable of speaking with energy and intelligence about creationism and dinosaurs and God and Superman and how on the reservation no one ever played Cowboys and Indians, but instead spent their days playing Indians and Indians, living a life we forced upon them rather than the one they deserved.