Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap (free books to read TXT) 📖

After some more searching, I read that outdated prototypes were being sold to the military wholesale. One article said that the Marine Corps had bought the largest share of them, because a lot of officers really liked them for training and specific tactical applications.

“Great,” I said, “another big flashing arrow pointing at the Marines.”

“Could those have been Marines in your house?”

“I don’t know. They weren’t wearing any markings.”

“The military isn’t allowed to operate within the US without a presidential order or something,” Amy said. “The… Posse Coma-something Act. Ever since the Civil War.”

Since I was in a web-searching mood, I looked up “posse civil war” to see what she was talking about.

The Posse Comitatus Act, I found, was passed in 1878 and indeed restricted the use of the federal military within the United States in effort to prevent the Army from being used as law enforcement. After the Civil War, people in Confederate states feared that the northern army would come in and generally “occupy” the South. Posse Comitatus meant policing had to be done by local law enforcement only. This means that the Army, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard aren’t allowed to do things like breach homes and try to kill teenagers. Unless, that is, the President suspends Posse Comitatus for a specific action. I didn’t even bother considering this went up that high.

Amy got up and stood over my shoulder, reading the screen along with me.

“God, what is this scar from?” she said suddenly.

“What scar?” I asked.

“On your shoulder, here.” She poked my shoulder blade quickly.

I tried to reach my arm around and feel it but I couldn’t reach. I stood up and went to her bathroom and tried to look at it in the reflection over my shoulder. It hurt my neck, but I could barely see a scar, maybe three inches long, on my back near my left shoulder blade. The skin was raised slightly, just a bit lighter in color than the rest.

“I’ve never seen it before,” I said, my head still craned sideways. I turned around and faced the mirror, looking at myself and trying to remember why I would have a scar like that on my back. “I can’t think of anything that would have caused it.”

Amy stood behind me, looking at it. “It looks old,” she said.

She held out a finger and lightly circled it. The touch was light, but it made my heart leap. I could feel the warmth of her body through my back. She ran her finger over the scar again. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched me, when I’d felt connected to another person. My breathing was slowing. In the wide bathroom mirror I watched her behind me, looking over the rest of my back. She placed her palm softly on my other shoulder, her heat spread across my body, my skin tightening. The muscles on my back went taut, along with my chest and abdomen. She pulled back on my shoulder slightly and I turned around and faced her, she went over my chest and stomach, as if looking for another scar or some other imperfection. She touched the middle of my chest, my sternum. There was still a slight discoloration from the bruise left by the seatbelt from when I crashed my own car into another.

“Things must be confusing for you,” she said. “Your life, I mean. All of it.”

I nodded, slightly.

She looked up at me in silence. She was only a few inches shorter than me but my eyes fell naturally to hers. The bathroom light was dim, casting shadows from her hair across her face. She stepped ever so slightly toward me, her hand lingering still on my chest. Her eyes were deep, her mouth just barely open. She looked at me. I said nothing.

Nothing in my life made sense, but when I was with her it all seemed to have some glimmer of hope. She kept me grounded. All I’d ever done, though, is put her in danger. Here she was, sticking through the bullets and the fire, and all I can do is bring her more of each. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to take in the warmth of her touch for as long as I could, and sighed. I opened my eyes again, looked at her again.

“When this is over…” I said.

She nodded, seeming to understand. She stepped closer and pressed her head against my shoulder. My right arm went around her waist, and I remembered the parking lot of the gun store in Lorton. When a stranger called out to me, I instinctively grabbed her waist and pivoted her behind me. I looked over at the mirror, at the both of us, then just at myself. It was getting harder to recognize myself. I kept looking. My face. My eyes. Something was different from how I remembered myself. I was changing.

Into what, I don’t know.

+ + + +

I woke up the next morning in a bed that wasn’t my own and quickly ran through a mental checklist that every guy must have hardwired into his brain for these situations. I had pants on, and that told me enough. I sat up and waited for the rest of my brain to wake up, and looked around. Soon enough I remembered the night before. I’d offered to sleep on the floor but Amy’s bed was huge so we decided it’d be fine for both of us. I was unsurprisingly exhausted and fell right asleep. I’d slept until noon the day after Lorton, and I slept through my flight after Vienna. It seemed that whenever Instinct Chris took over and got me out of dangerous situations, I slept like a rock that night. I ran a hand over my head, and willed myself to stand up.

Amy was sitting at her computer typing something I couldn’t see. When she heard me she turned the chair around and watched me try to pull myself together.

“You talk in your sleep, you know?” she said. She was dressed already. I tried to find a clock, gave up, and looked at her with tired-squinty eyes.

“I do? What do I say?”

“I couldn’t tell. Sounded like you were reading a grocery list or something, all monotonous and stuff.”

I shrugged, and started walking but stopped when I realized I didn’t know where I was going.

“I have some mannish Tshirts if you want,” she said, pointing at her closet, “and I got some of my dad’s sneakers from downstairs.”

I nodded. “We or I should walk over to my house and see if anybody’s there still. If it’s clear, I can get some of my stuff and try calling Rubino or Bremer again.”

She nodded. I found a concert T-shirt that fit me and put on a pair of Nike cross-trainers that looked reasonably new.

A few minutes later, we set off together towards my house. The spring air was crisp, but not too cold. It felt good in my lungs, like breathing new life. It smelled like someone was burning leaves. We cut through the lawns and climbed that small brick wall and slowly got closer to my house. Someone could have been there waiting, so I edged around a house across the street from my own so I wouldn’t be seen. I heard trucks running; big, diesel engines like garbage trucks.

I stopped for a second to yawn and leaned against the wall of the house. I should have gotten some coffee, but it was enough work sneaking out of Amy’s house without her dad seeing me. My brain still felt foggy.

Amy got tired of waiting and went the rest of the way around the house to the opening between it and its neighboring house. She stood in the clearing and looked across the street toward my house in silence.

I kept thinking about coffee. My brain is like mashed potatoes in the morning until I get some caffeine. I listened to the truck engines and smelled the air again, and remembered just then that it’s the fall when people burn leaves, not spring.

“Chris…” Amy said.

I walked to her in the clearing and said, “Hmm?”

She wasn’t looking at me, though. I followed her eyes across the yard and across the street to my house. The mashed potatoes in my brain suddenly froze into a slush and pain shot from my skull. My house had burned down.

All of it. My house was gone. There were blackened walls and a charred lawn, and between them were mounds of black wood. Fire trucks lined the street, with firemen walking between them — a few rolling up hoses. Some men were climbing through the burnt remains and poking at the piles with long sticks. Amy said nothing.

I wasn’t breathing. My house had burned down. I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. My mind could not produce a valid thought. My house had burned down. My legs felt weak. I slumped backwards and sat down in the grass. Amy looked down at me, then back at the direction we’d come from. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me up. She said something, but I couldn’t hear her. The grass was wet. My butt was wet.

My house had burned down.