Some Peanut Butter To Last a Couple of Days
A Story about Life in Wartime
All lyric credits go to The Talking Heads and Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
The sound of gunfire off in the distance almost didn’t register in Saul’s ears. He was used to it now. There was another explosion, this one actually rocking him against the wall he was crouched behind. His bleary eyes and the constant dullness were the only reminders that he hadn’t slept more than half a night in weeks. He glanced over his shoulder, towards a shot-out CVS sign still adorning a building with large shell-holes in the walls. They had to make it up the hill. That was their only chance.
A face briefly appeared in the window on the opposite side of the street. Immediately, the glass shattered as several snipers fired off their rounds. The face had ducked and Saul could tell his friend was unhurt.
“You gotta know not to stand by the window,” he muttered. “Somebody see you up there.”
The irony hadn’t worn off yet, although it tasted bitter to Saul. He kept imagining that he must be dreaming, and that one day he would wake up and find out he had fallen asleep over his keyboard. But the dream – if dream it was – just went on and on, until his old life seemed the dream to him, as unreal as anything could be.
Eight months ago, Saul had begun work on his latest novel, an ode to the music of David Byrne and the Talking Heads. In the book, the characters find themselves suddenly living out some of Byrne’s songs, and they discover that the key to the mystery that has ensnared their lives lies in a code contained in some of his lyrics. Naturally, the book included a scene in which a house burned down, and another scene where the characters needed to be transported to a river, dropped in the water, and washed downstream in a tiny submarine.
It wasn’t a particularly good book, but Saul had fun writing some of its cheesier moments. He’d titled it, Living During Wartime, in nod to his favorite Talking Heads song.
Recently, this hadn’t seemed funny to him anymore. War had broken out in America following the election and had quickly engulfed the entire country. Worse, Saul had begun wondering whether he was responsible. He had a sneaking suspicion, especially since he had heard himself utter several lines from the song in the last two months, when he hadn’t been thinking about anything and the words just slipped out.
Another explosion rocked him. They were getting closer. He was going to need to move out and try to make it to higher ground. As a writer, Saul disliked the fact that his mind was increasingly thinking only in song lyrics and cliches, but he found that he didn’t have time to come up with any better phrasing. Sometimes cliches were cliché for a reason.
Saul hugged his rifle to his chest as he crawled out from the table under which he’d taken refuge. The building he was in – a shell of what was once a Starbucks – seemed likely to collapse anytime. A year ago, he couldn’t have imagined himself holding a gun – for any reason. Now he could field-strip his weapon without looking at it and he had lost count of the number of times he’d fired it.
A final explosion knocked the last of the glass out of the windows and threw him to the ground. From what he could tell, the shelling was coming from the south, over the hill where the old bypass lay. It had already ripped up the shopping mall behind him, where only the blue B was left of a Best Buy.
Saul crept out of the door and into the parking lot and immediately hit the ground as machine gun fire ripped away over his head. He rolled and ducked and crawled and made his way towards a brick wall – all that remained of what used to be a bank. The machine gun kept chugging away, but he guessed the gunner hadn’t seen him, because the bullets came nowhere near him. The gunner was aiming at something further up the hill. He didn’t know who was up there, but then again he didn’t know who was left from his squadron.
He hunkered down behind the wall once he made it there. One thing he’d learned in this war was that everything happened quickly, but moved slowly. It could take days to move four blocks. Right now, his team was in retreat, but judging at their progress, it would be tonight by the time they made it up to Rio Hill – less than three miles away. Shelled-out strip malls and torn up highway lay between. Saul wondered whether any of his comrades would make it back, let alone himself.
They had a fort up at Rio Hill. They wouldn’t be safe there, but compared to this anything was safe. The artillery kept raining down. Saul was amazed he hadn’t been hit yet.
There was a buzzing as a helicopter flew in over what remained of the bypass. He watched it come over the shot-out overpass and waiting for the flash from the bay doors. Soon, the chattering came as the machine guns sticking out of the bay doors opened fire. None of the shells landed near him. The helicopter flew overhead and continued up towards the crest of the hill. Suddenly, something hit the helicopter near its tail and exploded. The tail came off and the burning wreck of the cockpit fell forward into the roadway. A rocket-propelled grenade. Saul pumped his fist.
“Glad somebody’s still out there fighting for us,” he said.
The war hadn’t always been this hot. There had been a clandestine phase, when he spent time in a cell of counterrevolutionaries, changing his hairstyle so many times he forgot what he looked like, carrying three passports and a couple of visas. Then there had been the hiding-out phase, mostly quiet, often punctuated by pure terror. He’d been all over the countryside. Life had been strangely boring, with long gaps in which nothing happened. Now, he wished it could be boring again.
Saul had no idea what the future held. He didn’t imagine what it looked like. He didn’t really believe it existed. There was only the present moment, and it went on and on.
Saul ended up being right. It took over six hours to reach Rio Hill again. He crawled through a burned-out movie theater and across chewed-up parking lots. He skirted a couple of craters where gas stations used to sit. In the early days of the war, gas stations were targeted for their explosive potential. Later, when gasoline became scarce, Saul regretted this. By now, no gas station still standing had any gasoline left in it.
When Saul got back to the base, ducking inside the maze of razor-wire and nodding to the sentries, he was exhausted. He tramped down into the basement they were using as a bunker. Primitive tunnels had been dug out in four directions, two of them opening into the trenches which had been built in the last month. They’d held this hill against all comers for two months, and in that time had settled in. It wasn’t a perfect redoubt, but it sufficed.
In the basement, a number of pale, overweight men sat staring at screens and playing with joysticks. Two years ago, Saul would have assumed they were playing video games.
These men controlled a fleet of small drones, as well as a couple of autonomous ground vehicles. These were their eyes on the battlefield, their snipers, and their best weapons. They monitored all approaches to the hill, and had kept this little hideout safe for two months. Saul doubted that they would have held the hill, if not for the drones. He would probably be dead. Saul knew that if he’d been an enemy, the drones would have taken him out before he’d ducked under the razor-wire and come down into the tunnels. In addition to the drones, a series of cameras had been placed throughout the wreckage in a one-mile radius surrounding the hill. Anything less than an aerial bombardment probably wouldn’t dislodge them.
That aerial bombardment was probably coming. Saul had heard the jets earlier today. Their position was known. Their enemies didn’t have planes in the area, but Saul knew some had been flown up from Florida. He guessed they had twelve hours, maybe less, before their position was hit. Saul wanted to bug out, but his comrades hadn’t agreed yet.
Saul went around the room, clapping the men on the shoulders and thanking them for saving his butt. He’d figured it was a fifty-fifty chance he didn’t make it back if they hadn’t been covering for him with the drones. A number of times, he’d broken cover, heard the chatter of machine guns ripping up the ground behind him, and then heard returning fire from the skies, covering him.
At the far end of one foldout table, a disheveled woman sat drinking a Diet Coke. She was monitoring a couple screens. Saul went to join her. He watched one screen, where a heavily-armored assault vehicle clambered over and through the wreckage. She told him it was twenty klicks to the north. The assault vehicle was theirs. Potshots came from several directions, but none damaged the vehicle. Even a small shell bounced off its armored hide. As Saul watched, a fleet of pickup trucks rode up, machine gun nests jerry-rigged in their beds. They opened fire at once, but still the vehicle slowly made its way forward.
Saul didn’t wait to see what happened. She was directing his gaze to another screen, where their sole remaining tank was bulldozing over the remains of a Waffle House. He wasn’t sure where this was. It swiveled its cannon from side to side and fired every so often. He saw distant explosions, in buildings and vehicles.
Then a direct hit came out of the sky. It was a Sidewinder missile from the looks of it. There was an explosion and the tank stopped dead. This was followed by heavy shelling for a solid minute. When the shelling ceased, Saul could see very little remained of the tank.
“Shit,” he said. They needed that tank.
There was a tap on his shoulder. Saul turned around. It was Peter. Saul stood up.
“Heard about Houston?” asked Peter.
Saul nodded. “Heard about Detroit?”
Peter’s eyes widened and he shook his head, but before he could speak, the woman drinking the Diet Coke said, “Heard about Pittsburgh?”
They both turned to look at her.
“No,” said Saul. “I didn’t. What happened?”
“Nuclear explosion,” she said. “Came through the chatter this morning.”
Peter whistled. Saul ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Wow,” said Saul. “Detroit was firebombed. Lincoln relayed that to me earlier today. He heard it through his network. Say, did he make it in?”
“Not that I know of,” said the woman drinking the Diet Coke. Saul had to remember to ask someone her name when she wasn’t around.
“If he’s still out there now, he probably won’t make it back tonight,” Saul said. “It’s getting pretty dark out there already.” He didn’t add that Lincoln might not make it back at all.
“If anyone can survive out in that wasteland at night it’s Lincoln,” said Peter.
Just then, their sole remaining anti-aircraft gun, which someone had requisitioned from a base up north, kicked on.
“Duck for cover?” asked Peter.
“What’s the point?” asked Saul.
“Houston, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, all in one week,” said the woman with a Diet Coke. “I assume Detroit was completely destroyed?”
“Some of the outer neighborhoods were lightly affected. Least that’s what I heard.”
They listened to the anti-aircraft gun until it stopped firing. By now, it had either run out of ammunition or scared off the bombers.
“How long d’you think before they hit us hard enough to break us?” asked Peter.
“Not long,” said Saul. “Five days? Doubt we can hold out much longer than that as it is.”
“What do we do?” asked Peter.
“Ask Lars sometime. He’s got all the answers. I think we need to move out.”
“Lars thinks so, too,” said the disheveled woman, who was some sort of officer in their hierarchy. Lars had been voted their general, and he made all the final calls about entrenching into a position or bugging out. Saul was hoping for a bug-out, but he wasn’t sure where they’d go. Probably retreat further north. They were surrounded in every other direction. Although he didn’t know. They could make a desperate, final charge. That might be about all they could do this time.
Just then, a phone rang. They had corded phones in every room of their makeshift bunker.
A flashback forced itself on Saul. Early days of the war. In a hotel room. Some woman with him. He struggled to remember her name. For some reason, he recalled that he’d just gone out for some food. “I got some groceries,” he could hear himself saying. “Some peanut butter. To last a couple of days.”
The phone rang. She went to answer it and Saul had yelled at her to leave it be. They had still been trying to hide out at that stage.
“They’re tapping phone lines,” he had told her. “You know that that ain’t allowed,” by which he meant that she wasn’t allowed to answer. But it was too late. She’d already lifted the phone off the receiver. Saul was sure they’d heard his voice. He’d been on the run for weeks and he wasn’t taking any chances. The two of them had skipped town as quickly as they could. They’d been on the run together for another week, until she had told him it was hopeless and there was no point to running anymore. She’d gone over and joined them. He’d continued running until he’d found the outfit he was with now.
Saul shook his head. He had enough déjà vu as it was.
Just then, two more people made their way into the basement. Saul knew their names were Brad and Lisa. They were laughing. For some reason, their laughter reminded Saul of something, and he broke. He jumped up and snapped at them.
“This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no foolin’ around. We ain’t got time for that now.”
Then he realized what he’d said. He slumped back down in the chair he’d been occupying.
“Hey, man, it’s okay,” said Brad. “It gets to all of us sometimes.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry. I guess I just had some déjà vu.”
“Déjà vu?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like something transmits a message to the receiver but I don’t quite get it. Hope for an answer someday.”