Joe looked at him close. He had grey hair tending to white, and ratty clothes, and a dirty cap,
and clean white teeth. Joe wondered how many of his people he'd lost in the War. Joe wondered if he
ever wondered, or if he only saw as Joe saw: a torrent of blood, his and others' in every direction.
"Okay," said Joe. "I'll move on." And he stood up, and walked past the man, and past the open
door on the truck. And the fat man said "Hey," and Joe couldn't tell whether it was hostile or friendly
and he didn't bother to find out.
Instead, he swiftly turned and shoved the open door of the truck into the fat man, who fell over
and tried to get up but Joe kicked him hard and felt his shoe crunch into the man's nose. And then he
reached into the cab and grabbed a tire iron from behind the driver's seat and he swung it at the man's
head and it connected and there was blood. Joe swung many times and the blood gathered and flew
and it splattered and as Joe was doing it he wasn't really sure why except he knew in his bones that
there wasn't time. He had no time.
When he stood up, he looked at his hands and felt regret and shame and sickness, not just for
what he'd done but for the last five years and the time before that and the loss of everything by
everyone. Unlike the men on the bus, he couldn't remember why he had been in the army or even
what army it had been, much less why it had been fighting to kill other people who when he was born
had all been Americans. He just knew that he no longer had a wife to go home to, or a son, but that
somewhere in the Commonwealth there was a daughter he needed to find. He would not let the regret
or the shame or the sickness deter him from this. There was nothing valid in any of it. As he got in the
dead man's car and wiped his face he knew it would do no good. Wherever he went and whatever he
saw was all the same.
The truck started up, and he turned it around to go the road north. UJ