The Birds

I pull the sleeves of my hoodie back down as Matthew gets out the tablet to turn on the news. The chill came from the west. I don’t even realize there’s the roof is half missing. The small group gathers around while I lean slightly against the wall outside the circle. It passed. It had the president’s support and both houses. His Holiness was now the commander and chief.

“With the increase of moral decay, hate crimes are now a global pandemic. But it’s easy to love your neighbor when you have all the resources you need. When you’re not hungry, insecure about your future. ...”

“Does this mean ...,” the newscaster interrupts the speech as it had been played in full all day, “that there is in fact, a Sanctuary Law in effective?” She looks back at her screen to watch His Holiness continue.

“We must commit the full efforts of our support and loyalty to the authority of the new world church to better our lives and those of our neighbors. Attendance ...”

The tablet went blank. Whether it was bird bots or battery, that was all the news they needed.

George slips me a bottle of whiskey he hid in his bathrobe. He is wearing it over his clothes like a jacket. He’s a drunk. Smells like crap. And I swore I’d never drink again but it’s that time. Never.

I don’t remember what happened after Sean went into the building. It exploded. They said I was searching for him in the rubble but I don’t remember. I just know Matthew picked me up, put a needle in my arm and hung a bag up on his back pack while ash floated through the air like cotton from the cottonwoods on a hot Sumer day.

“It will take some time, but you’ll come back.” Kathy leans over and washes my face. I don’t need my face washed, I need Sean. I need a bath. I have glass in my back and I feel the puss of my wounds sticking to my sweatshirt. But I nod. I just want to get to the whiskey in my pocket. If she’d hurry up, I could do that without Doc giving me a hard time.

Sean knew all of this was coming. Religious Liberty has been attacked for years. Our government was failing. Civil war left us broke as a nation, and broken as humans. Fearful, and soul hungry. If we were lucky. The rest of us were numb or buried so deep inside our own gray matter, we would never come out.

“Please drink this”, says Holly, as she lunges a cold bottle of water into my personal space. I back further into the wall, wincing as I realize that was a dumb idea. I don’t want her to smell the liquor. But I don’t want them to peel this sweatshirt off me and take my skin with it. Holly runs back to Matthews hand, looks into the air beside her, whispers and then looks back at Matthew.

“That’s Holly,” says Kathy. “Her mother died 6 weeks ago when her father shot a bird. He flipped them off, told his holiness to ‘suck it’ more than once. He wasn’t stupid. We all know they’re spies. A stubborn man. If he would have just kept quiet”.

I rush a swig when her backs turned. “Sean said if you confess his Holiness is the Messiah, they will shit gold coins”, I say under my breath moving slowly away from the wall.

Kathy’s eyes widen more from surprise that I spoke than by what I said. It’s been week’s since I spoke words. Since they found me. There are no room for words when the heart is busy with tears.

“We’re headed for Wray tomorrow. There’s a couple farm houses there. Coordinates left by a a colleague of Matt’s. I think there’s a generator and maybe ... maybe we can get you a hot bath,” She said softly.

I hope my eyes said thank you before I lean my head back to the wall. Two more swigs in and I’m starting to spin. I keep seeing his face. Who decides which memories will surface when grief has you by the balls? ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry’, he would always say. ‘I got you’

When my rope snapped on the side of the mountain, he literally pulled me up with one arm. I was 5’2” and 145lbs. I wasn’t really small then. This group of strangers has force fed me what I can get down but so far that’s only been the occasional lukewarm minestrone from the can the occasional piece of beef jerky. I maybe way 100 now and feel very very small. My black hair has turned white ... sometime. A Wednesday or two ago.

I was born with a deficit and the God I knew, had us in mind for each other. What did God have in mind now? Where are his agencies. His Holiness has millions of bird bots, the military, all the gold in North America, why couldn’t Sean have gotten one angel?

Holly manages to keep some sort of routine amid this organized chaos. She stuffs her doll nite-nite into her bag and pulls out her pajamas. She looks into the air and then over at me. Her 5 year old frame walks over with all the peace of an old man in his rocking chair sitting on summer’s porch.

“I have a present for you tomorrow, okay?”, she asks.

“Okay, “ I say and put my hand on her head, “tomorrow”.

Another swig in but I can’t count it’s what. The moonlight is shining in through the stained glass windows, right through the face of Jesus. Does he know? We’re marked for extermination. I look around the room. No one seems scared. Kathy and Matthew are taking first watch. I was ordered for bed but It’s no-sleep thirty on Whisky lane.

Kathy approaches. “I think that kind of defeats the purpose”, she whispers. She saw my last drink. Maybe she thinks I’m praying. “They call them spirits for a reason. They fog the frontal lobe. That is where Jesus talks to you from.”

Weeks ago, before Sean died, had I picked up a bottle I may have been defensive. But I had no need to hide my sin. Sure I tried to hide the bottle, but not out of shame. Out of keeping it in my possession. I am lost. There’s no hiding that.

“What’s the story with George?” I whisper.

Kathy leans in. “He lost his wife, sister in-law and Cockatiel, Lucy. He hasn’t climbed out of the bottle since. At night he sometimes holds his arm out, like he’s putting her back into her cage. Poor guy.”

I feel my eyebrows squint. “His wife or the bird?”, the booze say cooly.

I am glad we found a church with velvet pews. I lay on my stomach, put my jacket under my head and start to drift off as I watch the light move in and out of the face of Jesus.

Kathy walks back to the pulpit where Matthew is going over his gear. “What time do we leave?” she asks.

“Before second watch. I’m looking for my night vision goggles. I don’t even know if they will help. If only we had a full moon. Though, the clouds are so thick, that wouldn’t help anyway. Now might be the right time ... to pray”.

Kathy would be obedient if that was an order but it just made sense to her. She lays down and lets her head find support in her oversized purse and only luggage, picked a bible off floor, and held it to her like a teddy bear.

“It’s time.” George and one of the teens in the group woke me while everyone was loading the caravan of electric vehicles. I get handed a granola bar but really want to puke. Holly comes running up and gives me two Advil, and then I remember the water bottle she gave me. She looks into the air and then watches me swallow the pills.

“Is this the present?” I barely get out before another sip of water.

“No, she runs off and then remembers she’s in church and forces her self to slow down. I notice the missing roof and think: its okay, little one. I think He’s left the building.

I have a few hours to sleep before we have to abandon the vehicles and walk. Drinking doesn’t help. But something has to. The sun is coming up. We park. Time to walk. Silence through the tall grass. God be with us.

“Lucy! What the ..., how did you find me? You’re alive, Lucy! Lucy, I love you”. George is dancing around swinging wildly while protecting some memory he has held carefully in his arms.

Kathy runs over to quiet the drunk old man before he wakes a program in a sitting bird bot that could be left from some previous search party. But then she laughs and then shushes herself. She whispers with large mouth gestures, “it’s really Lucy, she’s alive.”

I see two farm houses and a large shed as we come out of the valley.

“Georgie, here come the birds, bad birds, bad birds,” says Lucy. We all stop, look around. Behind us. We run for the closest house.

“The shed, not the house. They will break everything in it, the shed,” screams Matthew.

We make it and shut the door just seconds before they start pelting the building. Mathew starts shouting orders. Everyone is running around securing the building with boards and gathering tools. If even one gets in, it could mean our life. And it does.

A window we can’t reach, here they come. George puts down his guns and pulls out his bats. He starts knocking the bolts out of those flying demons with both arms. Kathy, or Annie O, I’ve decided to nick her, is shooting and not missing one. Everyone has their tool but the birds keep coming. The shed is flooded with swirling robotic birds. Holly walks up to me and hands me my present. Like nothing is happening. Like we’re not going to die. “It’s time for your present,” she says loudly to be heard above the noise.

She hands me a heart shaped locket. I look at her. “Where’d you get this?”

“My bird.”

“A robot gave you this necklace for me?” I plead.

“No my real bird, the one standing next to me. He looks like a man but has wings. I don’t think Matthew can see him either. Maybe you’re too old and need glasses”.

I sit down to read the a note in the locket before I die. Matthew 6:26,34 & 35. I guess God has a sermon for me. I get Kathy’s stolen bible.

Verse 26: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

Verse 34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Verse 35. There is no verse 35! Heart pounding.

Matthew gets hit in the shoulder. He runs for Kathy’s purse in the search fir duct tape and notices me struggling over a strip of paper in Sean’s writing. Sean’s writing! How do I just notice?

He runs back to the door where his bag was dropped, grabs his phone, enters the code and a sound pierces through the shed and all the birds drop at once to the concrete floor.

He sinks to the ground, sweat dripping from his ... everywhere. Silence. He struggles with a strange equation under the verses. Writes something down on the floor like he’s doing math.

“Maria”, he says to me, “Sean’s alive. We meet him tomorrow. And I think this last part is ..., ‘don’t worry’.”