“I know not what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
~ Albert Einstein

“I’m glassing the terrain.” Vasquez adjusted the binoculars with sharp clicks. 

“That’s something hunters do,” Ernest said. “We’re not hunting.”

“Yes.” Vasquez lowered the binoculars and tilted his head, indicating they should get going. “Yes, we are.”

A dense dread swept through Ernest as they descended the main trail toward the village.  He squinted up at a pink-purple sky, almost distrustful of its existence. It was incredibly nice there and this fact made his stomach hurt. He pretended it wasn’t this fact and was just sun exhaustion.

Now evening was approaching and everything, including the people, had gone tipsy with the comfort of extravagant heat, and crickets howling into the night.

The colors were warm there and dragged up some cracked old remnant of Ernest that he’d left for dead. It was like when he was a kid and sat by the fire-stove. His mom would enter with hot chocolate and marshmallows while he would lie on the carpet, stream Netflix, and be sure that things were, at heart, quite simple. He was aware, even then, how nice that feeling was, like catching the fire in his palms. Ernest shook it all out of his head thinking how he wasn’t here for wonder, but was here for another thing; and the serene picture was shattered by Vasquez’s spurs.

There was spit and rattle below, the scatter of giggling kids lighting off a firecracker because it was the kind of place where the whole summer was a festival for no particular reason. The smell of gunpowder rose up like the tail of a beast and Ernest felt the old steel walls bending like wings over him, armored trucks coughing up gas, and the rustle of camo in a desert night. He let it all slip out of his mind so he could keep walking.

“This place,” Ernest said. “It’s like a fairytale.”

Vasquez nodded, the black of his hat covering most of his expression. “Yes, yes, like a fairytale. What do you think it is about?”

Ernest knew his job. He recounted to Vasquez the homes he had seen all day while scouting, homes where they kept berries growing in the front yard, and the architecture was all bright blocks like Picasso paintings in reverse, and how he’d seen some fruit, a gourd or some type, the size of a whole cart. No one here was trained in suspicion. It would all be simple.

“A cart?” Vasquez repeated aggressively.

“Yeah.”

“What a terrible size for a gourd.”

“There are worse things.”

“A gourd the size of a cart? What are you supposed to move it in?” Vasquez kicked at the dirt. “It’s impractical.”

Ernest smiled in spite of himself. “You’re funny sometimes, you know that?”

“Don’t say that.”

“No, really. You’re very funny sometimes.”

“No,” he said angrily. “You don’t know what you are saying. You don’t know me well enough to know about my being funny or unfunny.”

Ernest shrugged and pulled out a pod he had been saving the whole ride down; the vapor danced in the golden-hour sunlight. The cotton candy smell was perfection as it entered his lungs. “Okay then, you’re completely unfunny. Your mannerisms, your outfit, all of it.”

Vasquez eyed Ernest and looked like he wanted to hit him or snatch the Juul from his lips but didn’t.

The problem was that Vasquez dressed in all black clothing, a vest, a suit, a big hat; a sombrero or Stetson. A violent dark halo around him. That’s why he was so irritable, Ernest figured. It must have been sweltering underneath but Vasquez showed no signs of this and moved about as a silhouette of himself in the summer heat. In a place where the kids went around lighting fireworks shirtless, and the farmers wore thin ivory cotton, Vasquez looked ridiculous. A conquistador dipped into tar. A damned fool trying to look big, or at least that is how Ernest saw it.

“Impractical is the word,” Vasquez said, and tipped his hat further down. “Everything about this place is impractical.”

Ernest took another hit of the Juul, admiring the blue glow it made. “It’s a way of living.”

“People,” Vasquez said, spitting the words into the dirt, “with manicured bushes, glass gnomes in their yards, garden spices because they have nothing better to cultivate in life; and neighbors so far down the street you would need the afternoon to exchange news and mail.”

Ernest put the Juul back in his pocket. “What makes you think they need news and mail here?” he said. “Not everyone needs the plight of the world to arrive on their doorstep in gray folded slips each morning.”

Vasquez stopped dead in the trail and the jangling ceased. “If you feel that way about it then you should just leave this job to real men.” 

“Oh, come off it.”

“No, I mean it.”

“You know that is not what I meant.”           

Vasquez continued forward suddenly like none of it had been said.

“I bet if we search along these hills the mailboxes are painted and sculpted into roosters, and flamingos, and fish, and fireflies; I would bet all the money.”

Ernest shrugged again. “Yeah, why not?”

“And you know I have the money coming my way. Every soldier will. And I would bet it all.” Vasquez had become animated and talkative. Maybe he always got this way before drops. But how was Ernest to know?

 “It’s all very romantic. Sweet. Like back home. Way back…” Vasquez nearly trailed off, his voice went soft looking at the leaves, like an orange waterfall slipping into purple shade.  “This place is too much like a dream.”

“I wish all places could feel like this,” Ernest said.

Just then a boy went riding by on a bike and greeted them in dialect before wheeling upward, his tires click-clicking in the dirt.

“They can’t.” Vasquez’s voice had changed back. It was hard and unsympathetic now.

“I know, but I wish.”

“Your wishing won’t change anything; and it doesn’t always feel like this. Tomorrow it might be different.”

“You don’t know it’s not always like this,” Ernest said accusingly.

“I know,” Vasquez said, his voice a little louder. “Believe me, I know. All places are rotten somehow.”

“Show me the rot then. Point it out!” Ernest was yelling and didn’t know how that had happened. They were facing each other in the middle of the trail. Vasquez frowned.

“Just fucking forget it,” he said.

They continued walking while Vasquez smacked dirt off his pants.

To Ernest, Vasquez looked like a toy cowboy emerging from a stretch in the desert, arriving in town tired in the saddle with a clip-clopping horse, snorting at sand. But there was no horse or desert. Instead, there was the buzz of beetles like a current in the trees, and robins singing out like squeaky wheels tumbling down the branches. It was lovely. Looking at a first crush along a beach shore; that kind of lovely. There were homes down in this part of the valley that appeared as if they were carved out of trees. This too, was as lovely as anything Ernest could imagine. And he thought again of catching fire, or simply feeling a certain warmth of the soul that might be possible in a place like this.

“Jeez,” he said, and no more, because he didn’t know how to say it without making a fool of his own words in front of the dagger of a man that was Vasquez. Vasquez, with his dark brooding clothes, his tan clean-shaven face, his nose and jaw like a Roman Senator’s. He was the kind of man who drank whiskey while listening to old military podcasts on his vintage iPhone. That was the kind of man Vasquez was, or how Ernest imagined him to be. He could not really know.

They dipped out of the forest right into the village plaza, a tiny thing centered around a church full of white marble pillars with a copper-colored bell hanging from the top. It hadn’t rusted a bit. Ernest stood and wondered how something like that didn’t rust and turn green. There were cobblestones and a few Tuscany balconies with cross-threads of stairs and apartment numbers.

A woman hung clothes off her balcony, smiling at Ernest while he smiled back. The clothes on the line were plain undergarments and she kept staring at him, and it was fun because they both knew it meant nothing, and would come to nothing, and was a kind of joke.

“Careful,” Vasquez said. “That woman is going to remember you now.”

“Because I smiled?”

“Because you smiled,” he said. “She will remember the way you smiled and the way you walked, suddenly clumsy as you smiled, and the pink that came to your ears like a schoolboy, and the glow of the evening because it was just as all the loud insects were settling down in these damn fairytale grasses for dusk. She will make a grand description of it all in her head when she drops a plate in several days while washing it and remembers in terrible shock the interaction and what it must have meant to see those two foreigners there.”

“Fairytale grasses?”

“This is all you got from what I am telling you?”

 “She’ll remember a man dressed like a black shadow, a wannabe cowboy in a Johnny Cash song; she’ll remember that too.”

 Vasquez talked slowly in a dead hollow voice, the way one would to an ignorant child. “Yes, she will remember a tall man in black clothes and a black hat with a plain face. The clothing will tell her nothing. But she will remember your face very very well, your eyes, ears, and cheeks going red too. What do I care if she remembers what I wore on one particular day if it distracts from my face?”

Ernest gave it up and moved on. 

“This place reminds me of the Ozarks,” Ernest said. “These hills I once visited when I was a kid. We stopped and got ice cream at a shop with antiques and trinkets in the windows. You could taste the cream and milkfat. And they had old signs they’d polished up and hung everywhere that said things like Coca-Cola and Chocolate Malts 5 cents and Henry’s Gas & Electric Station. I never knew how special that day was with the milky ice cream until a long time after, and I never really went back to the Ozarks. I don’t know why.”              

 “Is that what you plan to do with your money? Go to the Ozarks?”

“Maybe,” Ernest said unconvinced, “but it was a long time ago. Besides, I don’t even remember where they are.”

They had made it to the tavern, this was all preordained. Ernest was unsettled by the way they’d just walked into town, as if on a light stroll. He couldn’t get the woman’s face out of his head now and hated how he suddenly understood Vasquez’s reasoning a little better.

They entered into dim light and huddled stools. There was a collection of quiet worn-down farmer types, with topsoil still in their fingernails.

They sat down at the bar trying to blend.

Ernest pointed to the racks of alcohol. “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” Vasquez said. “I don’t want to get drunk and stupid before this ends.”

“I’m not going to get drunk and stupid.”

“Did I say that?” Vasquez talked impatiently, “Is that what I said? Or did I say I didn’t want to.”

“It’s what you meant.”

Vasquez’s face went gloomy again. “I don’t want a thing here. Everything, including the wine, is probably made of fermented moss, nectar, honeysuckle petals, and frog breath. All the alcohol can fit in a bad storybook.”

“You know what I think?” asked Ernest.

The bartender came over and interrupted to take drink orders. He was a big bald man, curls of gray on the sides. His teeth were like bark when he smiled and asked in accented English what they’d like.

“Coke,” Vasquez said.

“We only got Pepsi off-brand.”

“Of course you do,” he said, spitting the words at the bartender, who frowned a little but continued, grabbing an empty glass from the rack.

“I think Luca, down the road a ways, has some bottles he keeps in his wine cellar. It’s real cool and sweet down there, and he uses the best grapes for the wines. But he’s a sucker for the American stuff too. I could run and grab him and see if Luca has some Coke to spare.”

“Luca?” Vasquez asked, unreasonably irritated. “Who is this Luca?”

“He’s a neighbor, like I said. Good fellow.”

The bartender mixed another’s drink while scanning the man in black and his sad-eyed friend. He looked worried. Maybe someone was on to them.

Ernest was surprised to find the idea filled him with a kind of sick hope.

Vasquez just continued glaring at the bartender, as if burning the whole place down with his eyes. “And he’d just give it to you?”

The bartender spoke, uneasy, “Well, of course, he’d give you one. I don’t drink the stuff on account of all the fizz.”

“And he’d just run down here with Coca-Cola in the coming darkness because a bartender asked him and he has soda to spare?”          

“Well naturally.”

“Naturally.”

Vasquez’s voice had gotten loud and sarcastic.

Ernest couldn’t for the life of him understand why Vasquez had to go and be a fool like that. Now they would surely be remembered, faces and all. He whispered into Vasquez’s ear that he was causing a scene. Vasquez’s lips tightened and he ordered water instead. The bartender walked away without even asking Ernest what he wanted.

Vasquez sulked for a moment, downing the glass of water, then turned to Ernest. “Okay, I give. What do you think?”

“You’re just jealous,” Ernest said. “These people are content and happy and you go around in your big violent clothes, and your spurs, with razorblade kind of work and you’re still unhappy, and so you’re jealous of these people for it.”   

Vasquez took another long sip of water. Then spoke quietly, almost so Ernest couldn’t hear, “It’s in southern Missouri.”

“What?”

“The Ozarks. They are in the southern part of Missouri. Arkansas too, the upper part, west of the Mississippi.”

Ernest could see Vasquez had calmed down and could be left alone. He headed to the bathroom and then stepped outside to vape and clear his head, watching the blue mist dangle from his lips. It seemed to take up the whole day, the sunsets here, like God was procrastinating, putting off night for the fun of a warm summer evening.

When Ernest returned inside adjusting to the darkness and all its soft silent corners, he found Vasquez playing cards with the locals. Their cover might already be blown and Vasquez indicated he knew this in the way he tossed his hat off to the side and just let it be. They were talking back and forth in single syllable answers that the old men grunted out. Vasquez’s eyes switched back and forth to his cards, completely lost in a world of spades, and kings, and queens, and definite winners and losers. Ernest had to smile at this.

Vasquez’s hands moved in a flash, scooping cards up across the table. He shuffled them, handling the deck the way a sculptor handles clay. Cards cascaded into themselves and made a ftttttt sound. He bridged them, applying pressure with his thumbs so cards floated up into his palms, like the start of a magic trick. He banged the side of the deck against the table to keep it neat and orderly, then placed it in front of the men.

It was all a quick breathless motion and no one thought anything of it except that this was a man who knew cards. Vasquez doled them out, with something resembling a smile creeping into his face for the first time.

The glide of cards across the table meant nothing to Ernest. He continually stepped out to vape and view the purple of the hills, until he stepped outside to find it was suddenly dark, and he felt inconsolably lost. The electric lights of cabins amongst the hills stood out like decoration bulbs or flickering candles, as if the hills were already holding vigil. It was hard to see where the constellations ended and the hills began. And he admired that about these hills, the way the stars could just be everything and everywhere.

 Crickets chirped, and more firecrackers went off in the distance. A teenage couple emerged from the darkness, chatting in smooth whispers and holding hands. The boy said something about the moon in the accented way they all talked here. The girl looked up, nodded, and whispered something back, kissing him on the cheek so the boy went extremely pink. Ernest could see the way the boy was smiling sheepishly in the starlight and clutching onto the hand he was holding, looking up to where Ernest was, embarrassed at his own giddiness. Ernest looked away.

“It’s girls like you,” the boy said.

She smiled, “It’s girls like me that what?”

“You don’t make a kid fall in love; you don’t give them the chance.” He looked at her real intently, “I just tumble, absolutely tumble into love. Gravity isn’t fast enough to do a thing.”

It was a sweet thing to say and the boy knew it, and the girl knew it and kissed him on the cheek again. They leaned closer and walked on. And Ernest had to stop vaping because he felt like his breath was upsetting something special in the night by hideously warping it; he’d never felt that way before.

He put the Juul in his pocket and thought of how he’d once known a girl, and been giddy like that. But he’d never said anything that sweet to her and he wished he had now. And he wished he’d done more than smile and let his ears go pink.

It was nearly time. Ernest returned inside to where all the cards were mostly face up and Vasquez was smiling and clinking coins together. A man was patting Vasquez on the shoulder and telling him it was a good game, and that Vasquez owned the hands of a buzzard, and that he would get him next time.       

  Vasquez must have known quite clearly there would be no next time, but he nodded and agreed, “Next time.”

He was still clinking the money in his palms when Ernest came over.

“The people are suckers,” he said plainly, “I robbed them good.”

“I see.”

“Didn’t even have to cheat, they just wanted me to wallop them it seems.”

Vasquez said this just loud enough so the whole bar could hear. He was still jeering and talking trash at the other men who just smiled and waved him off in the friendly mix of combat and respect that only comes to comrades who have faced in war, or those who have played a decent game of cards.

Ernest stood near him and said slowly, as if making a discovery, “You like these people.”

“Hmmm?” Vasquez was still counting the money.

“You like these people, probably more than I do. Every Luca in town will be gathering up their Coke’s to give to you if you keep this up.”

Vasquez said nothing but just stopped clinking the money together and let Ernest continue,

“Yes, you really like these people, and they’re good people to like too.”

Vasquez cut in, “I like money more.”

His face went blank and he started pocketing the coins.

Ernest got close and angry, “Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to go and ruin things by saying that? I was actually, for a moment, nearly enjoying myself.”

Vasquez stood up from his spot and his face turned dead serious.

“Shut up,” he said and turned to leave.

It was a short time waiting outside for their ride. Vasquez stood in the gravel fiddling with the money under electric lanterns. The stars were now hidden behind clouds.

“Violins,” Vasquez said suddenly.

“Violins?”

Yes, violins,” he repeated, as if it explained everything. “I once stayed in this town           where they had a shop that would make them. The process, which has hardly changed in centuries, is magnificent. Artisans would bring in wood, always fresh. It had a smell to it. And I would watch a man strip it down in layers by hand and set up the ribs, and the bow, and carve the body and maple neck. They had a wonderful little display for stringing up the wires where they would pull and wind everything tight to fit the pegs. There would be sanding, and strumming, and spacing of every curved joint in fine detail, and always the smell of a nice varnish too. It was like watching a man make a clock, so precise and full of art and love. But it didn’t tick. Instead, it let out these long wonderful beams of music into the narrow streets. I would watch them work for hours, I had nothing better to do that summer. There was this one girl who played in front of the shop every day holding the thing like a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, like she was dueling with the silence in the cobblestone streets. I loved her for that. In fact, I was completely in love with her before I realized it was actually the music I was in love with. And she was just like any of the others in the town. I learned a lot from watching them make the violins; they can teach you. I always appreciate a good violin.”

There was silence for a moment and Ernest just shuffled his feet crunching in the gravel. “What are you trying to say to me?”

“Don’t get caught up, it’s the music you follow.”

 “It’s so damn nice here. There has to be-”

“There isn’t,” Vasquez cut him short and looked around as if someone was there who could hear the second half of an unspoken sentence.

 The electric blue glow of Vasquez’s Juul appeared. As he puffed on it a tang of citrus burst into the air.

“Put that out,” Ernest snapped. “It gives me a headache.”    

Vasquez stopped, letting one more cloud billow, appearing like a Spanish dragon with the hot breath of a vaquero.

“Everything gives your types headaches.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” Vasquez said plainly.

“It’s just not fair,” Ernest replied, “I think I finally found my place.”

Vasquez said nothing. He remained still and looked out to the frontier of darkness.

“Please,” Ernest begged. “You can take my half of the profits. Fuck the profits in fact. We can put all the mercenary talk and marauding away for now. I can stay, you can start this whole mess in a different town.”

“And will that make you feel better?” Vasquez asked, lifting his eyebrows. “When you get to see it all happen up close, will you enjoy that?”

“Nothing has to happen.”

“Stop talking like a fool, enjoy the quiet night air.”

“I’m trying.”

“Just enjoy what you can.”

“I really am trying, but how do you enjoy this?”

“You are like a vacationer in the Bahamas who thinks they have fallen in love with the land. But you would not know what to do without their continental breakfast and without someone placing a margarita in your hand.”

Ernest looked at Vasquez sideways, disgusted. “I think I’ll just stay here.”

Just then there was the crunch of tires on gravel and a burnished car pulled up from the darkness.

“You won’t stay here.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I will.”

“It won’t be a clean death if you do.”

They both got into the car and Vasquez didn’t even look over or raise eyebrows at Ernest when he got in despite all his talk. The driver greeted them with the codeword. The place had been decently scoped out. He’d come along a different route, taken backroads, then backtracked as not to be followed. They were all so worried about other spies. They were terrified of themselves.

The driver asked if anyone had noticed them. Vasquez nodded and the driver sighed.                    “We’ll have to get a move on.”

They all got out. The driver unlocked the trunk and unlatched a tin kit. There was ovaline glass tubing and words written in secret coding that said to handle with caution in so many ways. Vasquez grabbed it and leaned against the curve of the car’s hood, looking over into the night again. The driver motioned hurriedly, indicating that it was getting late and it would be a long ride in the dark back to the border. Suspicions were already too high as it was.  

Vasquez was holding the tube sideways like it was a new insect he might consider squishing between his thumb.

Ernest eyed him. “Be careful with that.”

“Of course I’m careful. I know what it is.”

“No,” Ernest spoke in a fury. “I don’t think people like you do know what it is.”

“People like me?”

“People like you don’t understand what it is. They never do and we end up in these places doing these sorts of things, and you enjoy it because you don’t actually understand it.”

Vasquez gave him a look, a hatred buried deep in the eyes.

“Fuck you,” he said. “What an ugly thing to say and fuck you for saying it.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ernest said, realizing he’d gone too far. “Not that last part.”

Vasquez would not relent though, “You did mean it! And even if you didn’t mean to say it, you said it. And you are here. So what does that mean? Are you a ghost or something, or a man? Or are you half a man? A man at least has the balls to admit what he’s up to.”

The driver stared at them both impatiently and got back in the car to be ready when it was over.

“I just don’t like it,” Ernest said. “It used to be that a soldier at least gave the courtesy of showing you the barrel of their gun before blowing your head off.”

Vasquez moved aside, his spurs jangling in that stupid way Ernest had learned to hate more in a day than he previously thought he could hate a sound in a lifetime. Vasquez put on leather gloves and removed the capsule like pulling apart a toy, then disappeared inside the doorway.

Ernest returned to the car and sat in the cushioned heated seats, tuning into some foreign station on the radio. It was in French and he picked up pieces about flooding off the Mediterranean coast, and a trade deal with the EU and India, but there was static and he couldn’t hear all that well.

 He thought of how once Vasquez released the capsule in a person’s glass, they would drink it and the virus would be in them, like a pebble in the stomach they had no notion of at all. He thought how, this being a town for travelers and tourists, it would spread outward fast, and how in a week the first deadly symptoms would appear. At least a week, because that was how the biochemists had designed and manufactured it in their clean white walls of disinfectant and microbial holocaust. And Ernest’s bosses would already have shut their own borders down by then. Long before the government in this stretch of hills started lockdown procedures, or searching for a vaccine, or a culprit. The whole place would already be badly weakened for the invasion, and similar strains would be getting released throughout the rest of the coalition. And he thought how there would be no bombs, or planes, or shelling, or rubble on TV like in the desert, and very few marching armies. There would only be coughs, and masks, and cots followed by desolation and maybe fires, and drastic unrest in the streets. Ernest thought bitterly how World War III was shaping up to be a great disgrace and if it hadn’t been him in this town, surely it would have been someone else. And there were so many someone elses, too many, enough to make him sick. A different kind of sick though, from anything these civilians would have to face.                         

From the passenger side window Ernest noticed the stars were back out and they were so polished and nice he wanted to cry.

Vasquez skulked out of the tavern, opened the door, slammed it shut, buckled in, and said, “Go.”

It was all very neat and calm.

“Is it done?” asked the driver.

“Yes,” he said.           

“Yes?” the driver responded.

“I put it in the bartender’s drink, some of the other men too, the one’s playing cards. And thanked them for their hospitality.” The air in the car was stuffy and he was taking off the leather gloves and the whole outfit to get into something more fitting. “I made sure most of them had a good sip of it.”

The car rolled forward, crunching against the gravel, then dirt, then went smooth as they turned onto a main road in a sleek motion. They headed out past the dark swoop of hills and distant Alps toward a border. Ernest looked back at Vasquez who suddenly appeared very tired. Vasquez closed his eyes briefly before snapping them back open, sensing Ernest’s stare.

“Not a word,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to add any,” Ernest said. A grand sinking feeling spread over him.

“Good.”

Vasquez had not taken off the hat and now tilted it down over his head, so no one could see his face, then leaned back and presumably closed his eyes again.

Ernest hated it. They were escaping. They were going to get away with it. And he hated them all for it.

The feeling was tight in his chest until he took deep breaths and let it all pass. He stared out the window, but it was too dark to see much. He knew he’d be out by morning and so he wouldn’t get to see the hills again and wouldn’t be back; at least until after the invasion. But he wouldn’t want to see them then.                                    

Francis Felix Rosa is an editor, conservationist, and author of the children’s book Cryptidpedia. His fiction has appeared in the museum of americana, The Helix, Hidden Peak Press and The Furious Gazelle. His prose in the Big Bend Literary Magazine was nominated for Best of the Net. In 2018 he was the recipient of Wheaton College’s Helen Meyers Tate Memorial Prize for Original Verse. A wandering New Englander, he currently resides in Green Bay, Wisconsin.