The sky is a sheet of dark gray Smog pressing down hard on you, makes you breathe a little shallow. The rising sun is a small smudge of glowing clouds in the smog. Adam, Maya, Theo, and I are standing on the wall overlooking the battlefield. The brown concrete walkways gives a view of the entire field of battle.
Below us, the ground around the prison has been built up into a series of ramparts, rising and falling. Jagged, improvised, brutal and beautiful: built high enough to get the tank’s machine guns firing into the sky, for the seconds needed for the runs to sanctuary points set up to weather the machine gun fire when the tanks came back down and pointed into the fields. The Sons of Odin built most of them, preferring to be with their own, working day and night, hauling concrete chunks, welding scrap metal, stacking sandbags, shaping the fields around the prison into a series of landmines. They went up. The day before I was in the yard when a seemingly minor conflict came up and his military side came out like a repressed beast.
“You need help, and you don’t take it, why? You want to die here?” Jake tells them, “The more ramparts, the more chance we have of winning this battle. You don’t have enough people to finish, you call on the Diablos.”
The Son who is demanding they finish on their own tells him, half‑joking, half‑serious — too serious for Jake. “We are going to Valhalla. Are you suddenly afraid of dying? We are…” Jake is beside the man before I realize he has crossed the field. He smacks him open‑hand across the face, the ‘crack’ is loud as hell. Silences the yard. Turning around looking at all of his men he tells them, “I . . . . .HAVE NO NEED . . . . FOR CORPSES!.” His voice thunders across the fields, into the quieted yard. The Diablos were helping them within the hour.
In the blackened trees on either side of the road, the National Guard and the gathered soldiers were hidden by camo invisibility equipment blending them into the environment, scramblers for the heat sensors on the drones. Their firepower leading into the prison — ancient artillery pieces dragged out of storage, humvees, and a few shoulder held missiles. Enough, they are thinking. They’ve set up firing positions, dug trenches, placed spotters with drones all over the battlefield. They look tired, underfed, their uniforms loose on their bodies, but their movements showing the determination of hope.
They know Adam is in charge, follow his orders without hesitation. They’re young and were without officers since the front broke and the wealthy officers took off in helicopters for safer ground. I can tell they are happy to have an authority figure. I read once that 80% of people are looking for someone to follow. Not me.
‘Trust no humans,’ is my favorite line from the bible. That and the shortest verse. ‘Jesus wept.’ Shows my complexity, eh?
‘Shut up’
Fine, asshole.
Adam holds a walkie‑talkie in one hand, binoculars in the other. He scans the horizon from left to right. Finally stops dead center out from the prison where the road was, still an open pathway through the surrounding forest.. “They’re coming. Anyone think they’re ready? Time to think again.”
Theo mutters, “May we live to see another day, says Big Chief Who Munches On Bears But.” He might be the only one who laughs at his joke, but everyone seems glad he tried. Maya’s hand finds mine. She squeezes my hand too hard, her nervousness exposed before she loosens her grip.
The first tank appears on the ridge — dark silhouettes appear against the smoggy brown sky. A distant, blurry motion coming slowly at us. Then another. Another and another. Three in the first prong of the attack, just like the deserters predicted..
Adam speaks into the walkie. “Positions. Sons, prepare to charge. Napalm ready. No Valhalla trips today.”
Most of the Odins react with bluster, but a few look up at Adam before talking among themselves as they take their place in a line behind the ramparts, faces painted with ash, tattoos gleaming. They look like warriors from some ancient myth — doomed, ecstatic, hungry for the fight.
Adam looks tired. I doubt he has slept in days. “Attack.”
The Sons wait until the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns momentarily rise too high to fire down on them. Then, for the first time in a hundred years, an infantry unit charges.
They start screaming, hitting their chests, waving the napalm wildly in the air. As the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns are too high to hit a ground attack, they run… at a dead heat, and one makes it to the steel‑reinforced foxhole they built. Another hesitates, then follows. He’s psyched up and drugged and gets his mojo way too late.
I hear Adam behind me whisper under his breath, “Fucking idiots.”
The Son runs through the dirt and garbage walls, weaving through the path they made. The tank comes down and machine gun fire rips across the battlefield, first hitting the dirt and then goes across the lost Son. Blood spurts from a line of bullets slamming into his chest, spinning him around.
“Stay. Hold your positions.”
I hear Jake come through Adam’s walkie‑talkie, head of the Odins. He comes walking up to us on the wall. I straighten up for some reason and he looks at me and automatically says, “At ease.”
He has refused to speak to Adam up until then, except through Maya. “Adam, no matter what a man believes, I judged them in the military by their actions. Right now we are both warriors. We have no color. I am not going to be a slave. To die in battle is our highest honor, and the most foolish part of this damn religion. My men judge me by my actions, too.”
“No fucking way,” Adam says as he steps forward and offers his hand. Jake takes it without hesitation, then pulls him in for a hug. “We die in battle together, we go to Valhalla together.”
Adam breaks off the hug and laughs. “We live together. We will make it to Chicago.”
“Better,” Jake adds, joining in the laughter, showing me how much of his ‘hatred’ toward Adam was part of his act to keep discipline among his men. Divided and conquered. Always works.
The tanks rise on the ramparts again. Adam does not appear to be watching, though he is the first to notice and has the walkie at his lips, sounding nonchalant this time as he sends men to their death.
“Charge.”
Next up they try three, explicitly against Adam’s plan, and they know it.
“Two at a time. Stand down.” They ignore Adam, one taking the time to flip him off.
The first runs fast, covering the maze with the other two Sons on his ass. Too many, too many, too many… I try to remember this is just some fucking racist but it is too late not to care a bit about people who died on our fucking team, or whatever.
They hit the rampart a third time, the machine guns again useless — this is the suicide run.
I watch an Odin’s muscled arm throw the canister of napalm into the dark underside of a tank. Orange fire lights up and spreads across the bottom hatch. The tanks are at their highest point on the gauntlet, useless machine gun fire blasting into the sky. As all three begin their runs back from the burning tanks, they begin the tip back down. The men take off running toward safety, breakneck speed… one is too nervous, keeps looking back. The others pull off ahead of him. The tanks come back down and the Son is not going to make it.
Adam yells, “Stand down.”
Machine gun fire rips across the muscles that once defended him by intimidation alone. A line of four bullets across his abdomen splattering blood and spinning him around before he falls to a knee. The bullets have ripped up his guts so much, they eviscerated him; his intestines fall from his gut. He tries to shove them back in before collapsing, falling face‑forward into the macabre mess.
A tattooed, muscular arm comes out from behind the steel sanctuary, trying to reach him. A bullet shatters his wrist, leaving his hand dangling by a flap of flesh. The sanctuary is fired upon now. They scrunch down, cowering as bullets rip apart the flesh,
Adam, beside us, has been screaming “Stand down” into the walkie and again. An Odin did not listen to a Black man and this one lost his hand, the other his life..
“Jake, you need to issue orders. Jorge, you too. Theo, you need to get on here, too. Everyone needs to know these orders are from all of us. Not just some n——.”
Adam hands Jake the walkie. “How is Jason doing?”
“Jake?”
“Yeah, they got a tourniquet on that?”
“All the leaders are up here. Adam is instigating a plan that we all worked on for many months. I was the one who thought we could finish the yard, not any of you.”
“So when you don’t listen to some n——, you are not listening to me. How many times do I have to say this? In this military, we tell people how to act, not how to think. Next time you get an order from anyone, I do not care if it is a goddamn cell mouse, you better jump. Period..”
Jake lifts the walkie, voice suddenly iron.
“All Sons — stand down. Hold positions. No more charges unless Adam says so.”
The battlefield shifts.
The chaos tightens.
The Odins freeze, then obey.
The tanks, burning from the underside, begin to panic. Hatches slam open. Soldiers spill out, coughing, choking, dropping weapons, stumbling through smoke.
The Panthers move in — not to kill, but to disarm.
The Mongrels herd the soldiers behind cover.
The Diablos drag wounded men — enemy men — out of the fire.
The National Guard sees it.
They stop firing.
The battlefield goes quiet except for the crackle of napalm and the sound of men — enemies — gasping for air.
Adam lowers the walkie.
“That’s it,” he says. “They’re done.”
Jake nods. “We won.”
Theo exhales. “Holy shit.”
Maya squeezes my hand again — not fear this time, but relief.
Below us, the captured soldiers sit in a line, dazed, coughing, terrified.
A Mongrel hands the first one a steaming bowl.
Soup.
Actual soup.
The soldier stares at it like it’s a hallucination.
“You’re feeding us?” he whispers.
Maya calls down, “Eat.”
Another soldier sobs.
A third mutters, “We thought you’d burn us alive.”
Adam walks past them, not unkind, not gentle — just practical.
“Prisoners get fed,” he says. “That’s the rule.”
Jake adds, “Honor.”
Theo shrugs. “Soup’s good.”
I holo it all for posterity..
Mercy, confusion. Humanity. I feel something in my chest loosen — just a little — like a knot that’s been there for years finally giving way.
Not hope.
Not forgiveness.
Just… possibility.
The sky is a flat sheet of gray, the kind of smog that presses down on you, makes you breathe shallow. The sun is a smudge of lighter smog. Adam, Maya, Theo, and I stand on the wall overlooking the battlefield. Below us, the ground around the prison is dirt churned up into a series of ramparts rising and falling — jagged, improvised, brutal and beautiful. The Sons of Odin built most of them, preferring to be with their own, working day and night, hauling concrete chunks, welding scrap metal, stacking sandbags, shaping the fields around the prison into a series of landmines.
A minor conflict comes up while Jake is showing me their efforts. They needed help finishing their job. “The more ramparts, the more chance we have of winning this battle. You don’t have enough people to finish, you call on the Diablos.” The Son who is demanding them finish on their own, tells him, half-joking, half-serious – too serious for Jake. “We are going to Valhalla. Are you suddenly afraid of dying? We are going with, or without you.” Jake is beside the man before I am aware of what the holo is recording. He smacks his open hand across the face; the smack is loud as hell, even over the tanks,. “I have no need for corpses.”
Back in the blackened trees around the road, hidden by cameo and invisibility equipment blending them into the environment, scramblers for the heat sensors on the drones; the National Guard was ready. Their trucks sit on both sides of the road leading to the prison — old Humvees, battered transports, ancient artillery pieces dragged out of storage. They’ve set up firing positions, dug trenches, placed spotters with drones all over the battlefield. They look tired, underfed, determined. They know Adam is in charge here, and they follow his orders without hesitation. They're young and have been without officers since the front broke and the wealthy officers took off in helicopters for safer ground. I can tell they are happy to have an authority figure. I read once that 80% of people are looking for someone to follow. Not me.
Adam holds a walkie‑talkie in one hand, in the other binoculars. He is scanning the horizon from left to right. Finally stops dead center out from the prison and says, “They’re coming,” he says. “Does anyone think they are ready? Time to think again.”
Theo mutters, “May we live to see another day, says Big Chief Who Munches Bear But.” He might be the only one who laughs at his joke but everyone seems glad he tried. I smile. All of us seem reassured he is just acting like himself.
Maya’s hand finds mine. She squeezes once, hard.
The first tank appears on the ridge — a dark shape against the smoggy brown sky. A distant, blurry motion coming slowly at us. Then another. Three more. .
Adam speaks into the walkie. “Positions. Sons, prepare to charge. Napalm and Molotov's ready. left flank, disabling tank in position L-2. Let’s burn some fucking pedo lovers.”
Most of the Odin’s react with bluster but a few are looking up at Adam for a moment before talking among themselves as they take their place, in a line of Odin’s behind the ramparts, faces painted with ash, tattoos gleaming. They look like warriors from some ancient myth — doomed, ecstatic, hungry for the fight.
Adam looks tired. I doubt he has slept in days. " Attack"
The Sons wait until the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns momentarily rise up too high to fire down on them. Then for the first time in a hundred years an infantry charges. They start screaming, and hitting their chests, waving the Napalm wildly in the air. As the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns are too high to hit a ground attack, they run... at a dead heat, and one makes it to the steel reinforcement foxhole they have built, another hesitates, then follows, he’s gets his mojo way too late.
I hear Adam behind me whisper under his breath, "Stand Down. Now.” He tells the walkie. To us he whispers, “Fucking idiots."
The Son runs through the dirt and garbage walls, weaving through the path they have made. The tank comes down and machine gun fire rips across the battlefield. Bullets slam across his stomach, the bullets large and frequently fired, he takes God knows how many across his lower stomach. Blood spurts from the line of bullets slamming into his chest, spinning him around.
"Stay. Hold your positions." I hear Jake come through Adam's walkie talkie, head of the Odin's. He comes walking up to us on the wall. I straighten up for some reason and he looks at me and automatically says, "At ease."
He has refused to speak to Adam up until then, except through Maya. "Adam, no matter what a man believes, I judged them in the military by their actions. Right now we are both warriors, we have no color. I am not going to be a slave. To die in battle is our highest honor, and the most foolish part of this damn religion. My men judged me by my actions, too. “
"No fucking way." Adam says as he steps forward and offers his hand. Jake takes it without hesitation, then pulls him in for a hug. “We die in battle together, we go to Valhalla together.”
Adam breaks off the hug and laughs, “We live together, we make it to Chicago.”
“Better,” Jake adds, joining in the laughter, showing me how much of his ‘hatred’ toward Adam was part of his act to keep discipline among his men, divided and conquered. Always works. All of the gang leaders relied on the principle.
The tanks rise on the Ramparts again. Adam does not appear to be watching though he is the first to notice and has the walkie at his lips, sounding nonchalant this time as he sends men to their death, "Charge!"
Next up they try three, explicitly against Adam’s plan, and they knew it. The first runs fast, covering the maze with the other two Son’s on his ass. Too many, too many, too many. I try to remember this is just some fucking racist but it is too late not to care a bit about people who died on our fucking team, or whatever.
They hit the rampart a third time, the, machine guns again useless – this is the suicide run. The tanks are up and as the two run at different tanks, trying to get the napalm burning through the bottom, sending noxious fumes inside, driving the soldiers outside, where they are going to have to fight fully armed, motivated soldiers.
I zoom the holo in on an Odin’s muscled arm as he throws a canister of napalm into the darkened underside of the tank. Orange fire erupts, and spreads across the bottom hatch.. The tanks are at their highest point on the gauntlet, useless machine gun fire blasts into the sky, as they all three begin their runs back from the burning tanks, they begin the trip back down . . . the men take off running back toward safety, break neck speed… one is too nervous, keeps looking back and the others pull off ahead of him. The tanks come back down and the Son is not going to make it.
Adam yells, “Stand down.”
The machine gun rips across the muscles that once defended him by intimidation alone. A line of bullets across his chest splatters blood and spins him around before he falls to his knees. The bullets have eviscerated him, his intestines fall from his gut. He tries to shove them back in before collapsing, falling face forward into the macabre mess.
A tattooed, muscular arm comes out from behind the steel sanctuary, trying to reach him. The aim shifts back and a bullet hits his wrist, shattering the bones, leaving his hand dangling by a flap of flesh.
Adam, beside us, has been screaming ‘Stand down’ into the walkie again and again, an Odin did not listen to a black man and this one lost his hand. The first one lost his life.
“Jake, you need to issue orders. Jorge, you too. Theo, you need to get on here, too. Everyone needs to know these orders are from all of us. Not just some n……. “
Adam hands Jake the Walkie. “How is Jason doing?”
“Jake?”
“They got a tourniquet on his wrist.”
“Yeah, all the leaders are up here. Adam is doing a plan that we all worked on for months.”
‘So when you don’t listen to some n….., you are not listening to me. How many times I gotta say this. In this military, we tell people how to act, not how to think. Unless it affects the job you are doing. Like this shit. Stand down, and wait for orders.”
“Get back Samuel back with Theo’s folk. Listen to your commanding officer next time, dismissed.”
Adam mouths to Jake, ‘Stand down, Be prepared for further attacks.’
He adds, “For now, stand down. Prepare for further attacks, if nothing happens, I will send you over to do back up for Panthers and Mongrels. The National Guard. Now, fucking understand something. I love you dumb fuckers, but right now, whoever talks through this walkie is the general, and I don’t give a shit if it is a goddamn cell mouse.”
Adam takes back the Mic, “N.G., when you have six tanks in the lines… hold on, almost there. Now, break your cover. Fight well.”
He is addressing the National Guard out in the forests.. I zoom the holo in on a camouflaged soldiers face, painted black and brown to fit in with the smoggy sky and burnt earth. The forest of mostly burnt stumps, has just enough still standing scorched trees to hide the old fashioned arteliery, flame throwers, trucks; other tools of death. Called up, they go from staying still to a clockwork of movement, sketched months ago on a chalk board, in a crowded war room, carefully separated by Gang affiliations.”
The black smoke and stench of the burning tanks attests to their being disabled chunks of metal blocking the route into the prison. Forcing the line of tanks to go around, though the woods that the National Guard had filled with artillery. They begin to fire immediately, a tanks is hit and the top explodes. Between the exploding missiles fired from shoulders into tanks, the gangs run fearlessly, using the chaos exactly as was meant to be, throwing napalm on the remaining tanks to force them out into the open, IEDs are hit, blowing out he tracks on the humvees. Explosives built by chemists with what they had in the prison, and they had plenty of explosives and hundreds of years of prisoners research into making explosives in prison.. The retreating soldiers brought more. The commanders, trapped now without nine of their tanks, are trying to retreat. The soldiers they interrogated said get the commanders and they will surrender. The commanders, in their black and gold uniforms, with guts that show they are not lacking for any food. The National Guard moves in quick again, the prisoners again thinking they will die bad, one commander shoots himself in the forehead rather than face the lies about us.
They surrender and are surprise when they are zip tied and lead to the other prisoners, who showed their anger toward them, to the point they needed to be separated.
We won the physical war. What was to come next, who knows?
Adam motions to some panthers sitting down with drone controllers and I see them fly directly to where the commanders are getting out of their disabled humvee.
around the commanders – their real target. Most the soldiers were conscripts fighting with a gun at their backs – and the commanders held the guns.
Maya and I are holding one another on the wall, looking down on the battle. I think of laying on that hill in my own filth, filming the desperate scenes of horror, a man sneaking a bite of another man’s liver, knowing he would be shot the way he so terrified. The faces of the platoon come back, and I see them between battles, just people, talking, laughing, joking. I knew they should have deserted. Every one was going to end up dying bad. I wanted to tell those kids to desert before that last battle. Had I suggested the soldiers desert, the officers would have shot me on the spot. I shake my head to come back into the now. Maya is looking up at me oddly, as if I were a wounded animal? Fuck that.
We all watch as Ellison’s caravan comes to the disabled tanks and splits into two slim columns. The chalk board has them doing just what they do – now we were waiting until the tanks are well into the woods before ordering the attack.
.
