Deserts of Fire Read online

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”

  8

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”: the crowd screaming.

  “Jeremy!” I shouted. “I can read the words!”

  7

  My hands hovered over my bank of firing buttons… .

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” the words said.

  Didn’t the captain understand?

  6

  “What do they want us to do, Jeremy?”

  5

  Why didn’t the mushroom cloud give the order? My men were waiting! A good sailor craves action.

  Then a great voice spoke from the pillar of fire:

  “DO IT … DO IT … DO IT… .”

  4

  “There’s only one thing we can do down here, Duke.”

  3

  “The order, men! Action! Fire!”

  2

  Yes, yes, yes! Jeremy—

  1

  I reached for my bank of firing buttons. All along the console, the men reached for their buttons. But I was too fast for them! I would be the first!

  0

  The Big Flash

  Kate Wilhelm’s impact on the science-fiction genre is difficult to overestimate. In 1962 she wrote her first novel in the late evenings while her two children were in bed, and she has been a prolific and influential writer ever since. Along with her husband Damon Knight, she helped to establish the Milford Writers’ Conference and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, institutions that have influenced so many science-fiction writers working in English that even a summary list of highlights could span for pages.

  Kate Wilhelm’s first short story “The Pint-Size Genie” was published in Astounding Science Fiction in April of 1956. She is as well known for her mystery novels, including the Barbara Holloway detective series, as she is for her many science-fiction works, such as her novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang and her collection The Infinity Box. Her short fiction has received several Nebula and Hugo awards. The author Joanna Russ, speaking of Wilhelm’s story “The Village,” called it “the best piece of propaganda I have ever read.”

  “the village”

  KATE WILHELM

  mildred Carey decided to walk to the post office early, before the sun turned the two blocks into a furnace. “They’ve done something to the weather,” she said to her husband, packing his three sandwiches and thermos of lemonade. “Never used to be this hot this early.”

  “It’ll get cooler again. Always does.”

  She followed him to the door and waved as he backed out of the drive. The tomato plants she had set out the day before were wilted. She watered them, then started to walk slowly to town. With a feeling of satisfaction she noticed that Mrs. Mareno’s roses had black spot. Forcing the blooms with too much fertilizer just wasn’t good for them.

  Mike Donatti dozed as he awaited orders to regroup and start the search-and-clear maneuver. Stilwell nudged him. “Hey, Mike, you been over here before?”

  “Nope. One fuckin’ village is just like the others. Mud or dust. That’s the only fuckin’ difference.”

  Stilwell was so new that he was sunburned red. Everyone else in the company was burned black. “Man, could we pass,” they liked to say to Latimore, who couldn’t. Mr. Peters was sweeping the sidewalk before the market. “Got some good fresh salami,” he said. “Ed made it over the weekend.”

  “You sure Ed made it, not Buz? When Buz makes it, he uses too much garlic. What’s he covering up is what I want to know.”

  “Now, Miz Carey, you know he’s not covering up. Some folks like it hot and strong.”

  “I’ll stop back by after I get the mail.”

  The four Henry children were already out in the street, filthy, chasing each other randomly. Their mother was not in sight. Mildred Carey pursed her lips. Her Mark never had played in the street in his life.

  She dropped in the five-and-dime, not to buy anything but to look over the flats of annuals—petunias, marigolds, nasturtiums. “They sure don’t look healthy,” she said to Doris Offinger.

  “They’re fine, Miz Carey. Brother bought them fresh this morning from Connor’s down at Midbury. You know Connor’s has good stock.”

  “How’s Larry getting along? Still in the veterans’ hospital at Lakeview?”

  “Yes. He’ll be out in a couple of weeks, I guess.” Doris’s pretty face remained untroubled.

  “They’ve got such good doctors down there, I hate to see him get so far from them all, but he wants to come home.”

  “How can these people stand this heat all the time?” Stilwell said after a moment. The sun wasn’t up yet, but it was eighty-six degrees, humidity near one hundred percent.

  “People, he says. Boy, ain’t you even been briefed? People can’t stand it, that’s the first clue.” Mike sighed and sat up. He lighted a cigarette. “Boy, back home in August. You know the hills where I come from are cold, even in August?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Vermont. I can remember plenty of times it snowed in August. Nights under a blanket.”

  “Well, he can help out here in the store. With his pension and the store and all, the two of you are set, aren’t you? Isn’t that Tessie Hetherton going in Peters’ market?”

  “I didn’t notice her. Did you want one of those flats, Miz Carey?”

  “No. They aren’t healthy. Connor’s must have culled the runts and set them out.” She stood in the doorway squinting to see across the way to Peters’ market. “I’m sure it was. And she told me she’s too arthritic to do any more housework. I’ll just go talk to her.”

  “I don’t think she will, though. Miz Avery wanted her on Wednesdays and she said no. You know Mr. Hetherton’s got a job? With the paper mill.”

  “Shit. That won’t last. They’ll pay off a few of last winter’s bills and then he’ll start to complain about his liver or something and she’ll be hustling for work. I know that man.”

  She left the store without looking back, certain that Doris would be eyeing the price tags of the flats. “You take care of yourself, Doris. You’re looking peaked. You should get out in the sun.”

  “Mrs. Hetherton, you’re looking fit again,” Mildred Carey said, cornering the woman as she emerged from the store.

  “Warm weather’s helped some.”

  “Look, can you possibly come over Thursday morning? You know the Garden Club meets this week, and I can’t possibly get ready without some help.”

  “Well, I just don’t know … Danny’s dead set against my going out to work again.”

  “But they’re going to have to close down the mill. And then where will he be?”

  “Close it down? Why? Who says?”

  “It’s been in the papers for weeks now. All those dead fish, and the stink. You know that committee came up and took samples and said they’re the ones responsible. And they can’t afford to change over the whole process. They’re going to move instead.”

  “Oh, that. Danny said don’t hold your breath. They’re making a study, and then they’ll have to come up with a plan and have it studied, and all in all it’s going to take five years or even more before it all comes to a head.”

  “Hm. Another big kill and the Department of Health …”

  Mrs. Hetherton laughed and Mildred Carey had to smile too.

  “Well, anyway, can you come over just this time? For this one meeting?”

  “Sure, Miz Carey. Thursday morning? But only half a day.”

  The school bus turned the corner and rolled noisily down the broad new street. The two women watched it out of sight. “Have you seen the Tomkins boys lately?” Mildred Carey asked. “Hair down to here.”

  “Winona says they’re having someone in to talk about drugs. I asked her point blank if there are drugs around here and she said no, but you never can tell. The kids won’t tell you nothing.”

  “Well, I just thank God that Mark is grown up and out of it all.”

  “He’s due home soon now, isn�
�t he?”

  “Seven weeks. Then off to college in the fall. I told him that he’s probably safer over there than at one of the universities right now.” They laughed and moved apart. “See you Thursday.”

  “Listen Mike, when you get back, you’ll go through New York, won’t you? Give my mother a call, will you? Just tell her …”

  “What? That you got jungle rot the first time out and it’s gone to your brain?”

  “Just call her. Say I’m fine. That’s all. She’ll want to have you over for dinner, or take you to a good restaurant, something. Say you don’t have time. But it’d mean a lot to her to have you call.”

  “Sure. Sure. Come on, we’re moving.”

  They walked for two hours without making contact. The men were straggling along in two uneven columns at the sides of the road. The dirt road was covered with recent growth, no mines. The temperature was going to hit one hundred any second. Sweat and dirt mixed on faces, arms, muddy sweat trickled down shirts.

  The concrete street was a glare now. Heat rose in patterns that shifted and vanished and rose again. Mildred Carey wondered if it hadn’t been a mistake to rebuild the street, take out the maples and make it wide enough for the traffic that they predicted would be here in another year or two. She shrugged and walked more briskly toward the post office. That wasn’t her affair. Her husband, who should know, said it was necessary for the town to grow. After being in road construction for twenty-five years, he should know. Fran Marple and Dodie Wilson waved to her from outside the coffee shop. Fran looked overdue and miserable. Last thing she needed was to go in the coffee shop and have pastry. Mildred Carey smiled at them and went on.

  Claud Emerson was weighing a box for Bill Stokes. Bill leaned against the counter smoking, flicking ashes on the floor. “Don’t like it here, get out, that’s what I say. Goddamn kids with their filthy clothes and dirty feet. Bet they had marijuana up there. Should have called the troopers, that’s what I should have done.”

  “They was on state land, Bill. You had no call to run them off.”

  “They didn’t know that. You think I’m going to let them plop themselves down right outside my front door? Let ’em find somewhere else to muck about.”

  Claud Emerson stamped the box. “One seventy-two.”

  Stilwell and Mike were following Laski, Berat, and Humboldt.

  Berat was talking.

  “You let it stick out, see, and come at them with your M-16 and you know what they watch! Man, they never seen nothing like it! Scared shitless by it. Tight! Whooee! Tight and hot!”

  Stilwell looked as if he saw a green monster. Mike laughed and lit another cigarette. The sun was almost straight up when the lieutenant called for a break. He and Sergeant Durkins consulted a map and Humboldt swore at great length. “They’ve got us lost, the bastards. This fuckin’ road ain’t even on their fuckin’ map.”

  Mildred Carey looked through the bills and advertising in her box, saving the letter from Mark for last. She always read them twice, once very quickly to be sure that he was all right, then again, word for word, pausing to pronounce the strange syllables aloud. She scanned the scrawled page, then replaced it in its envelope to be reread at home with coffee. Bill Stokes’s jeep roared outside the door, down the street to screech to a halt outside the feed store.

  Mildred shook her head. “He’s a mean man.”

  “Yep,” Claud Emerson said. “Always was, always will be, I reckon. Wonder where them kids spent the night after he chased them.”

  Durkins sent out two scouts and the rest of them waited, cursing and sweating. A helicopter throbbed over them, drowned out their voices, vanished. The scouts returned. Durkins stood up. “Okay. About four miles. The gooks are there, all right. Or will be again tonight. It’s a free-fire zone, and our orders are to clean it out. Let’s go.”

  Loud voices drifted across the street and they both looked toward the sound. “Old Dave’s at it again,” Claud Emerson said, frowning. “He’ll have himself another heart attack, that’s what.”

  “What good does arguing do anyway? Everybody around here knows what everybody else thinks and nobody ever changes. Just what good does it do?” She stuffed her mail into her purse. “Just have to do the best you can. Do what’s right and hope for the best.” She waved good-bye.

  She still had to pick up cottage cheese and milk. “Maybe I’ll try that new salami,” she said to Peters. “Just six slices. Don’t like to keep it more than a day. Just look at those tomatoes! Sixty-nine a pound! Mr. Peters, that’s a disgrace!”

  “Field-grown, Miz Carey. Up from Georgia. Shipping costs go up and up, you know.” He sliced the salami carefully, medium thick.

  A new tension was in them now and the minesweepers walked gingerly on the road carpeted with green sprouts. Stilwell coughed again and again, a meaningless bark of nervousness. Durkins sent him to the rear, then sent Mike back with him. “Keep an eye on the fuckin’ bastard,” he said. Mike nodded and waited for the rear to catch up with him. The two brothers from Alabama looked at him expressionlessly as they passed. They didn’t mind the heat either, he thought, then spat. Stilwell looked sick.

  “Is it a trap?” he asked later.

  “Who the fuck knows?”

  “Company C walked into an ambush, didn’t they?”

  “They fucked up.”

  Mildred Carey put her milk on the checkout counter alongside the cottage cheese. Her blue housedress was wet with perspiration under her arms and she could feel a spot of wetness on her back when her dress touched her skin. That Janice Samuels, she thought, catching a glimpse of the girl across the street, with those shorts and no bra, pretending she was dressing to be comfortable. Always asking about Mark. And him, asking about her in his letters.

  “That’s a dollar five,” Peters said.

  They halted again less than a mile from the village. The lieutenant called for the helicopters to give cover and to close off the area. Durkins sent men around the village to cover the road leading from it. There was no more they could do until the helicopters arrived. There were fields under cultivation off to the left.

  “What if they’re still there?” Stilwell asked, waiting.

  “You heard Durkins. This is a free-fire zone. They’ll be gone.”

  “But what if they haven’t?”

  “We clear the area.”

  Stilwell wasn’t satisfied, but he didn’t want to ask the questions. He didn’t want to hear the answers. Mike looked at him with hatred. Stilwell turned away and stared into the bushes at the side of the road.

  “Let’s go.”

  There was a deafening beating roar overhead and Mildred Carey and Peters went to the door to look. A green-and-brown helicopter hovered over the street, then moved down toward the post office, casting a grotesque shadow on the white concrete. Two more of the monstrous machines came over, making talk impossible. There was another helicopter to the north; their throb was everywhere, as if the clear blue sky had loosened a rain of them.

  From the feed-store entrance Bill Stokes shouted something lost in the din. He raced to his jeep and fumbled for something under the seat. He straightened up holding binoculars and started to move to the center of the street, looking through them down the highway.

  One of the helicopters dipped, banked, and turned, and there was a spray of gunfire. Bill Stokes fell, jerked several times, then lay still. Now others began to run in the street, pointing and shouting and screaming. O’Neal and his hired hand ran to Bill Stokes and tried to lift him. Fran Marple and Dodie Wilson had left the coffee shop, were standing outside the door; they turned and ran back inside. A truck rounded the corner at the far end of the street and again the helicopter fired; the truck careened out of control into cars parked outside the bank. One of the cars was propelled through the bank windows. The thunder of the helicopters swallowed the sound of the crash and the breaking glass and the screams of the people who ran from the bank, some of them bleeding, clutching their heads or arms. Kathar
ine Ormsby got to the side of the street, collapsed there. She crawled several more feet, then sprawled out and was still.

  Mildred Carey backed into the store, her hands over her mouth.

  Suddenly she vomited. Peters was still on the sidewalk. She tried to close the door, but he flung it open, pushing her toward the rear of the store.

  “Soldiers!” Peters yelled. “Soldiers coming!”

  They went in low, on the sides of the road, ready for the explosion of gunfire, or the sudden eruption of a claymore. The helicopters’ noise filled the world as they took up positions. The village was small, a hamlet. It had not been evacuated. The word passed through the company: slopes. They were there. A man ran into the street holding what could have been a grenade, or a bomb, or anything. One of the helicopters fired on him.

  There was a second burst of fire down the road and a vehicle burned. Now the company was entering the village warily. Mike cursed the slopes for their stupidity in staying.

  Home was all Mildred Carey could think of. She had to get home.

  She ran to the back of the store and out to the alley that the delivery trucks used. She ran all the way home and, panting, with a pain in her chest, she rushed frantically through the house pulling down shades, locking doors. Then she went upstairs, where she could see the entire town. The soldiers were coming in crouched over, on both sides of the road, with their rifles out before them. She began to laugh suddenly; tears streaming, she ran downstairs again to fling open the door and shout.

  “They’re ours,” she screamed toward the townspeople, laughing and crying all at once.

  “You fools, they’re ours!”

  Two of the khaki-clad GIs approached her, still pointing their guns at her. One of them said something, but she couldn’t understand his words. “What are you doing here?” she cried. “You’re American soldiers! What are you doing?”

  The larger of the two grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her. She screamed and he pushed her toward the street. He spoke again, but the words were foreign to her. “I’m an American! For God’s sake, this is America! What are you doing?” He hit her in the back with the rifle and she staggered and caught the fence to keep her balance. All down the street the people were being herded to the center of the highway. The soldier who had entered her house came out carrying her husband’s hunting rifle, the shotgun, Mark’s old .22. “Stop!” she shrieked at him. “Those are legal!” She was knocked down by the soldier behind her. He shouted at her and she opened her eyes to see him aiming the rifle at her head.