Besides those, there were a few trees with multiple, ugly white, misshapen branches that weaved themselves into a sort of macabre tapestry that seemed more akin to a crude imitation of Medusa’s hair than native flora. These trees bore a stout, almost regal appearance, with rich green leaves and a large base.

  John stopped.

  He motioned for Sofia to come forward.

  Taking the cage quietly from the girl, he moved slowly, opening the box he’d been carrying. He crept toward the base of one of these ugly-yet-beautiful trees. Bending down, he released the spiders he’d been so diligently transporting through the forest and trotted comically back to where the others stood.

  “That’s it?” Trey asked, getting close to John’s ear.

  John nodded. “That’s one of the few banyan trees. They prefer those. They’re kind of similar to the trees they prefer,” he whispered.

  Trey tried not to reveal how bad the village leader’s breath smelled. The fact that he kept a straight face and didn’t make any audible expressions of disgust seemed a testament to his growing power of diplomacy and self-control. He took solace in that while he stood there, waiting for something to happen.

  The man darted forward. John moved surprisingly swiftly.

  John’s actions seemed to Trey like the sharp talons of a raptor slicing through clear river water to tear into the soft flesh their prey. He widened his eyes. Tensing, he realized that the bulk of the action had already been completed in the short span of a blink.

  Shoving a small black object into the cage and slamming the door shut, John slumped to the ground, letting out a breath. He smiled. Offering them a thumbs-up, he wiped a hand over his forehead. “One down,” he said.

  The bird began singing from inside the cage.

  “What the…” Trey asked. He had been standing right next to the village leader. Until he hadn’t been. The fact that he could move so quickly disturbed Trey. He’d grown used to John, viewing him as the enemy he knew. But, he was increasingly coming to realize, he didn’t really know the man at all.

  “Did you get one?” Sofia asked, suddenly rushing forward. She blithely avoided being captured by her father’s restraining hand. Kneeling down, she pressed her face against the cage, peering inside. “Ooooh. So pretty,” she said.

  “Okay. But, we need to give him some space,” John said gently.

  Sofia stood up and backed up a few paces, though she didn’t tear her gaze away from the cage. “Wow,” she managed to say. She bounced up and down, obviously having a hard time containing her excitement. “I can’t…”

  “Well, you’ll get a chance to look at him in a bit,” John said. “We need to quiet down and wait for his mate to come over.” Shooing them all back, the village leader positioned them some distance away from the banyan tree. He watched the cage intently, poised on the balls of his feet, waiting patiently.

  “Weird tree,” Trey said.

  “Yeah, it is. It’s not really even supposed to be here,” John said, not tearing his gaze away from the banyan.

  “Why’s that?” Trey asked. He placed a hand on his daughter’s leg to keep her from going crazy.

  “Something about the soil. It’s not very moist,” John said. Then he smiled. “It’s not very anything, really,” he said.

  “What’s that mean?” Trey asked.

  “So many questions,” John said. He turned and looked at Trey briefly. “I have some books on soils and biodiversity of atolls, if you’d like to read them. I imagine we’ll have some time to read if we do manage to make it to Tahiti and a French boat,” he said. “Until then, please, shut up.”

  Trey looked over at his daughter. He could feel her smirking. Fighting the urge to reach over and slap the man, he instead leaned on the levity of the moment. He quietly tousled Sofia’s hair. Glancing at Melody, he saw that she was watching the exchange with casual, detached interest, her green eyes alight.

  They waited almost what seemed an eternity. It felt increasingly difficult to stay still. Trey’s legs were growing numb. They tingled. He wanted to get back to his crew and the relative safety of the village. His mind kept wandering back to that, and he found himself growing anxious as he focused more and more on the many things they could be doing instead of this. He almost spoke several times, only to abort the words before they escaped his oral cavity.

  Then, once again, John suddenly swung into action. His movements were so quick, it was hard to keep track of him. He was to the banyan tree within mere seconds. Once there, he snapped one hand into the air and snatched a rapidly moving blob out of the air. Biting his lower lip, he called in a strained voice for Sofia. “Hurry, please,” he said.

  She bent down and waited for his signal to open the cage. When she did so, she hastily got out of the way, her face glowing with triumph and excitement. Sofia briefly exchanged a glance with her father.

  In that moment, Trey decided that all of the day’s travails had been worth it. That moment validated every sacrifice he’d made up to then. The pure joy in her face was sufficient to sustain him through quite a few more zombie ambushes.

  “We got ‘em,” John said, his voice laced with pride.

  Chapter 13

  “We’ve got a problem,” Chloe said.

  Trey frowned. He waited for more details.

  “Your dad says he’s not leaving,” she said, elaborating.

  Grinning from ear to ear, Trey shook his head. “I’ll take care of it,” he muttered. That old man, he thought as he strode across the village toward the shed where his father had been abandoned. He took a perverse sort of pleasure in getting to tell the martinet Harry that Trey had taken the reins. HE was in charge now, and Trey wanted to make sure his dad knew it.

  “I’m not going,” Harry said as soon as he heard the door creak open. “Don’t even try to change my mind.”

  Instead of saying anything, Trey lowered himself, scooping his sick dad up off of the dirty floor. Tossing him over his shoulder with a grunt, Trey carried him out into the humid daylight, carefully depositing him on the ground. Aware that dozens of pairs of eyes were on them, Trey smiled and sat down next to Harry. “Yes, you are, dad,” he said. “I’ll carry you over to that boat and strap you down by myself, if I have to,” Trey said.

  “Why are you doing this to me, son?” Harry asked, his tone suddenly pleading. Tears formed in his eyes. His hand trembled as he reached out and scraped a hand over Trey’s knee. “I’m sorry I was so rough on you all those years. But… can I just please die in fuckin’ peace?” he asked.

  “Do you want to see the cool birds Sofia helped catch?” Trey asked. He didn’t want to show it, but the plea for mercy actually tugged at his heartstrings. He’d felt a similar way more than a few times over the short duration of their stay there on the remote island. He could distinctly recall at least two separate occasions where he’d been so willing to give up and die, he’d practically surrendered to the zombies. It felt hard to imagine how difficult life must be for the proud and strong Harry, now reduced to a vulgar, slovenly burden on his family and strange protectors.

  The man had been existing in a disgusting dungeon, for crying out loud.

  “Is the pain really that bad, dad? They say you’ll get better with time,” Trey said, his voice lower. He glanced over at his daughter, who was beaming as she proudly displayed the cage containing the chattering avian captives, recounting the tale of John’s heroic trek through the forest. “They went to all that trouble for those birds,” Trey said.

  “They sent me to fetch some weird duck during the war,” Harry said. He coughed. The force of it wreaked havoc on his body. He sat up suddenly, flailing one arm as he fell back to the ground with a thud. He laughed and swiped a hand at Trey, dismissing his attempt to help. “Forget about it,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  Trey gave Harry a long look that clearly said I don’t believe you. Even so, he remained silent for several seconds, waiting for the lingering stares of the crowd to dissipate. Then he smiled. “A duck?” he asked. He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You mean to tell me there’s a Vietnam story I haven’t heard?” he asked. Once again, he was surprised.

  Harry chuckled. “I haven’t told you this one, have I?” he seemed to genuinely be trying to sort out if he had. After a few seconds of internal debate, he shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Not much of a story, really, anyway,” he said. He seemed to be bracing himself for another cough, but it never came. “We were in Hue. One of the crazier battles. An ACTUAL battle, by the way. Some senator’s wife had heard about this duck that lived down in the forest between there and Da Nang,” Harry said. He shot his son a conspiratorial look. “That’s just what they told us, anyway,” he said.

  After a brief silence, Trey had to ask: “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah, eventually. Had some local ARVN deal with it,” Harry said. He grew reflective for a moment. “Whether they intended it or not… knowing how messed up everything was, I would venture to guess that they didn’t actually intend it, but, regardless, that actually did help give us some valuable information,” he said. “Don’t ever discount stuff like that, son. Just because a mission seems silly or takes you away from something you really want to be doing,” Harry said.

  “What do you mean?” Trey said. This sounded like a repeat of the sermon John had recently delivered. He just barely rejected the impulse to roll his eyes.

  “Seriously, Trey. The last thing…” he sighed. “I can’t really convey it to you, but I’m starting to think you may be starting to get some understanding. Anyway, son, when we were in Hue, it was bad. Not Khe Sanh bad, but bad. I mean, Southeast Asia was nothing more than varying degrees of Hell for me, but…”

  “You always go off on tangents when you tell war stories, dad,” Trey said, offering a mild rebuke.

  “I’m old enough to do what I want,” Harry said. To which, they both chuckled. “Listen, son, what I’m saying might be important. Because, what I’m trying to tell you is something I didn’t learn in any book or training. The U.S. Government spent a lot of money to teach me how to kill and then all about accounting. It, however, never offered much in the way of practical wisdom.” He fixed a serious, somber expression on his son. “I wanted to stay in Hue so bad. At some points, I was so tired and mad, I really wanted to just die there. I felt guilty. I was alive and a lot of people around me were not. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was to leave that fight to go chase a damn bird for some senator… probably one of the idiots who were making it so hard to do the job we were sent to do, anyway,” he said.

  “The lesson here might be that there are times where the obvious might not be so obvious. Sometimes you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture,” Harry said. “That bit of time gave our little team a bit to refresh. We became so… so inured to it all, so used to violence, that we would sometimes just rush right into situations without thinking about the bigger picture. We’d get impulsive, letting bloodlust drive us. It also offered us a real chance to catch up on the land, the creatures besides humans that were caught up in what we were doing. You know, those resources were going to be there after I left, no matter how I did it, and that only kind of dawned on me at that point,” Harry said.

  “I’d be all over. We spent a lot of time engaging with various tribesmen, all the Montagnard people and mountain folk, delivering pamphlets and all that. But we never really paused to actually take in things,” he said. He shook his head. “Anyway, we went out of our way for a bird, too,” he said. “It didn’t feel like it at the time, but it was worth it,” Harry said.

  “You didn’t get any tactical intelligence?” Trey asked.

  “Look at you, boy, using big words,” Harry said. He chuckled. Reaching out, he playfully swiped at Trey’s arm. “We did gain some good intelligence on the terrain around one of our most important air bases. Which is what I suspect the actual mission was,” Harry said. “We were long-range reconnaissance patrols. Technically speaking, anyway. So, yeah, apart from the abstract, the little homily your old dad just foisted upon you…”

  “Almost ready,” John called out. He interrupted, walking over and popping a squat. “How you feeling?” he asked Harry.

  Harry chuckled. “Do you have to ask?”

  Then he frowned. “I shouldn’t say that. I’m better than your poor wife. I do hope she gets better,” Harry said.

  John grew sad. He looked over toward his wife, who also lay on the ground, sleeping. “Me, too,” he said, his tone distant, almost wistful.

  “Heard you went and got some birds?” Harry said.

  Shaking his head as if to clear it, John looked back toward Harry. “Oh, yeah. Really remarkable little creatures. To me, anyway,” he said.

  “Well, good for you. I was just telling Trey here that sometimes you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I was in Vietnam, and it wasn’t until I was nearly done and unwilling to re-up that I came to realize all that land, all the rivers and trees, it was all there long before any of us and would be long after. That perspective really helped change something in me. Humbled me, really. In a way that I really needed at the time,” Harry said. “Probably kept me from killing myself,” he added.

  “Funny,” John said, smiling wryly. “I was just telling your son something similar before we headed out.”

  “Would you guys stop dogging me?” Trey asked, blushing a little. He smiled, mildly embarrassed. In a way, it felt good. Better than anything he’d experienced in recent memory, save being reunited with Sofia. It was a very ordinary, human thing, something he might expect in a time when they weren’t fleeing a remote island with exotic birds because of zombies and hostile militias who gang-raped his wife.

  “I should’ve kept you down there in that cellar. Maybe those toxic fumes would’ve done something to your weird brain chemistry,” John said, patting Trey on the back to make sure he knew the man was joking.

  “No, no. I’m good,” Trey said. He waved a hand dismissively. Turning to his dad, Trey grew sober. He frowned. “So, dad. If I agree to stay humble and become some hippie Gaia lover, do you think you could agree to tag along? See the transformation you’ve inspired?” Trey said.

  Harry wiped at his face with a quivering hand. He smiled weakly, his eyes shimmering with nascent tears. Something in his expression hinted at the powerful reaction going on inside the stoic man. “Son, you really want me to go?” he asked. “I… I won’t… I won’t be a burden on you?” he asked in a weaker voice. He looked away.

  Trey got up and went to his father. He placed a hand on him and looked down at him with a profound sadness. Everything else around him seemed to evaporate as he focused on the narrow sphere around the man who’d helped create him. He waited, scrabbling for words, intensely troubled by this display. In all his life, the only other time where he could think of a memory even remotely close to this was when his mom, Harry’s wife, had died. Seeing his dad like this was not high up on his list of fun-time activities.

  “Dad…”

  Licking his lips, Trey glanced up at the sky as if seeking inspiration from the clouds. He sighed. “Of course I want you to come, dad,” he said. “I mean, you’d never believe me if I tried to lie and say that I always liked you. But I’ve always loved you, dad.”

  “I just… I feel so weak,” Harry said, hiding his face. He quietly cried. Having come from a generation where men didn’t fancy such lachrymal expressions of grief, Harry wasn’t proud of the moment.

  Trey tried to remain quiet, despite his racing thoughts. He was anxious about everything. He still hadn’t coordinated much with his crew. They were about to leave for another new remote island. His wife was now around, but he wasn’t fully comfortable with her presence…. The list was becoming interminable.

  Finally, he’d had enough. “Dad, ultimately, what you want to do is your decision. It wouldn’t really be right for me to tell you that you had to come with us. To force you. If you really want to just lay down and die out here, then… I mean, I don’t want that. I’d be sad. Sofia would be sad. John here seems to like you; he’d be sad,” Trey said, looking up at the village leader for confirmation. He smiled when John nodded. “But, look, no one here is ashamed of you. We all know you’ve been sick. Useless?” Trey snickered. “You sure gave me lip service on how to use a rifle,” he said. “And I needed it,” he added.

  Trey stood up. “I need to do a few things before we go, though, dad, and I’m just wasting time here. You make your choice, okay? We’ll all love you, either way,” he said. And then he forced himself to walk away.

  Willing himself not to turn and look back, Trey caught sight of Melody, sitting near the partly burned building where her previous comrade had been burned alive in a callous act of treachery. He hesitated. Then, sighing, he walked forward. He needed to clear the air between them. If he didn’t, the whole tension would fester.

  He didn’t want any more distractions.

  “Hey,” he said. He stood there awkwardly, avoiding her inquisitive gaze. “May I sit down,” he asked.

  “Of course you can,” she said.

  They sat there for several seconds, each waiting for the other to break the coarse silence hovering in the air between them, creating a bubble of tension. Trey finally cleared his throat and seized the initiative. “Dad just got really weird,” he said. Trey couldn’t really think of anything else to say. He’d tried to come up with something, but he kept drawing blanks. Only vacant space.

  Melody made a humphhing sound. She began bouncing one foot up and down. “Your dad’s always been weird,” she said.

  “Zombie romance… that’d make a great novel,” Trey said. As soon as the words tumbled out of his mouth, he realized it had been an asinine thing to say. He stood up, catching her, grabbing her by the arm before she fled. “Melody, I’m sorry,” he said.

  She turned and slapped his face.

  But she didn’t run.

 

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