The Whore of Babylon

Part 3

Without warning, someone opened the door. It was a young man, wearing a similar uniform as my own but with a lower rank.

"Major!" he said and saluted me. "Finally!" He had the same odd dialect as the man. "Are you with the reinforcement from the east coast?" As he spoke, I hesitantly stepped outside. The sky was just as dark as before, but the snow was gone and it wasn't cold anymore.

"What's going on?" I said, to myself rather than to the young man.

"We lost our commander a few days ago," he said as we walked toward a group of soldiers that surrounded what looked like a convoy of military vehicles, including a tank. "Our company was dropped pretty far behind Checkpoint Necessity two weeks ago, and since then we've been fighting our way to our objective. But it's been a mess from day one, and now it's just thirty of us left. Luckily, we just intercepted the transport and–"

I stopped listening, it was just too much to take in. It felt as if I were dreaming and yet I knew I was awake. The confusion made me dizzy. I turned around and looked back at the school. It didn't look like before. Now it looked like an ancient ruin, almost completely destroyed. And then I saw the bodies. A soldier was piling them up on the schoolyard. They were all wearing blue uniforms.

"We got them good," the young man said. "And boy are we happy to see you. Where's the rest of your company?"

"Company?"

I couldn't grasp what was happening around me.

"Are you okay, ma'am?"

I had no idea what to say... The old man had told me I would understand what to do, but this was completely insane. "Did he drug me somehow?" I asked myself. But then I saw them... the soldiers were leading them out of one of the captured trucks. A group of children. It only took a fraction of a second to recognize him, even though he had a bandage covering one of his eyes. It was James. He was one of the children being led out of the truck.

My confusion evaporated in an instant. I still didn't understand anything, I understood even less now, but my senses sharpened like a tiger locking on to it's prey.

"Ma'am?" the young soldier enquired. "The occupying forces sent you as reinforcement, yes?"

"Um..." I had to think quickly. What the fuck I'm going to do? But I knew, just like the old man had said. Even though I had no idea what had happened, I understood what to do. And it was true, I was the only person in the entire world that knew how important that boy was. To everyone else, it would just have been a boy among other boys. For reasons impossible to understand, I had stepped out into a war zone and found my son and now I had to save him. But how? The address, of course!

"Listen," I said, trying to give my voice some authority. I did have to role play, after all. "Um... My company was shot down over..." I interrupted myself since I didn't know what place to pick. "Three of us survived," I continued, "but the other two got killed just a few miles from here. I'm sorry to bring you these bad news."

I looked at the young man in the eyes. He's disappointment was hard to miss.

"Ma'am, I'm very sorry to hear that. It will be difficult to get out of here alive without reinforcement."

He introduced me to the rest of his company. They were all young men, saluting me with pride in their eyes. They looked up to me, wanted me to be proud of their accomplishment.

"If they only knew who – or what – I really am," I thought.

They had captured an elderly general, a man with silver-gray hair wearing a blue uniform with four silver stars on it. Next to him, a soldier laid dead. Just as young as the others. I wasn't able to reflect on it, but I saw the American flag on the side of his arm. There was a bang. One of the yellow soldiers had shot the general in the head.

"He wasn't going to tell us anything," they said.

I stared at the body, trying to hide the horror I felt.

"What... what about the children?" I asked.

"We didn't know anything about them," one of the soldiers said.

I walked toward the children with decisive steps. I didn't want them to know about my relationship with my son, so I placed myself behind him and pretended to pay all the children an equal amount of attention. I tried my best to hold back my tears of happiness when I finally reached James. He recognized me immediately, my poor boy. He was still only seven years old, just as if time had stood still since he vanished from the line at the grocery store. I was afraid he would expose me, but his voice was so hoarse and broken when he spoke that even I had trouble hearing what he said.

"Mom?"

He wanted to hug me, but I forced myself to push him away.

"Not now, my sweet boy," I whispered. "I love you, I love you." I had to control myself like never before not to throw my arms around him. "Listen, we have to play a game, okay? You have to be quiet, you have to be very very quiet and not say a word to anyone. Can you do that? Nod if you think you can do that." He nodded. "Okay, good."

I sat down and talked a little to the other children as well. There were six of them in total. After that, I stood up and joined the soldiers. Still completely disoriented, I spoke up:

"Listen!" They all looked at me. It felt strange to have this kind of attention, and I had to fight a blush appearing on my cheeks. "My company was shot down, and I was the only one to survive. But my men didn't die for nothing. We were given very clear orders to protect these children and to bring them to a specific location. I'm not at liberty to say why, but given how well our enemies tried to keep them from us I think you can all understand their importance."

The soldiers whispered to each other. I was afraid they didn't believe me. One of them spoke up:

"You weren't sent here by the occupying forces, were you?" he said. I swallowed nervously, fearing they would execute me just like the general. But then he continued with excitement in his eyes: "You got your orders directly from New Babylon, didn't you?"

New Babylon? "Yes!" I said. "Of course."

The soldiers smiled at each other, and then they all yelled out in unison: "For the emperor!"

"For the emperor indeed!" I said. "Our mission is simple." I picked up the note I had been given by the man and read it. "We have to bring these children to... to Saint Nicholas Street!"

The soldiers looked frightened. No one seemed willing to speak.

"Well?" I said. "Is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am, it's just that..." one of the soldiers said. "It's just that we just came from that area. It's heavily guarded."

"I see," I said nervously. "I know I'm asking a lot of you, but I'll personally make sure the emperor hears of your bravery. If we succeed with this mission, you'll be remembered as heroes throughout the entire empire!"

After a lot of discussions, during which I did my best to pretend I knew what I was talking about, we decided to use the captured tank and the other trucks to try some kind of sneak attack. The soldiers who took it upon themselves to drive dressed in their enemy's uniforms, the rest of us hid away inside the trucks. I decided to join the truck with the children together with the first soldier I had met when I came to this place.