And then you just had accidents. So many buildings had been weakened from the fighting. Throw in years of neglect, and foot after foot of snow. Whole roofs collapsed, no warning, whole structures just tumbling down, I lost someone else like that. She had a contact, a feral running at her across an abandoned auto garage. She fired her weapon, that’s all it took. I don’t know how many pounds of snow and ice brought that roof down. She was… we were… close, you know. We never did anything about it. I guess we thought that would make it “official.” I guess we thought it would make it easier in case something happened to one of us. [He looks over at the bleachers, smiling at his wife.]

Didn’t work.

[He takes a moment, a long breath.]

And then there were psych casualties. More than anything else combined. Sometimes we’d march into barricaded zones and find nothing but rat-gnawed skeletons. I’m talking about the zones that weren’t overrun, the ones that fell to starvation or disease, or just a feeling that tomorrow wasn’t worth seeing. We once broke into a church in Kansas where it was clear the adults killed all the kids first. One guy in our platoon, an Amish guy, used to read all their suicide notes, commit them to memory, then give himself this little cut, this tiny half-inch nick somewhere on his body so he would “never forget.” Crazy bastard was sliced from his neck to the bottom of his toes. When the LT found out about it… sectioned eight his ass right outa there.

Most of the Eight Balls were later in the war. Not from the stress, though, you understand, but from the lack of it. We all knew it would be over soon, and I think a lot of people who’d been holding it together for so long must’ve had that little voice that said, “Hey, buddy, it’s cool now, you can let go.”

I knew this one guy, massive Yoidasaurus, he’d been a professional wrestler before the war. We were walking up the freeway near Pulaski, New York, when the wind picked up the scent of a jackknifed big rig. It’d been loaded with bottles of perfume, nothing fancy, just cheap, strip mall scent. He froze and started bawlin’ like a kid. Couldn’t stop. He was a monster with a two grand body count, an ogre who’d once picked up a G and used it as a club for hand-to-hand combat. Four of us had to carry him out on a stretcher. We figured the perfume must have reminded him of someone. We never found out who.

Another guy, nothing special about him, late forties, balding, bit of a paunch, as much as anyone could have back then, the kinda face you’d see in a prewar heartburn commercial. We were in Hammond, Indiana, scouting defenses for the siege of Chicago. He spied a house at the end of a deserted street, completely intact except for boarded-up windows and a crashed-in front door. He got a look on his face, a grin. We should have known way before he dropped out of formation, before we heard the shot. He was sitting in the living room, in this worn, old easy chair, SIR between his knees, that smile still on his face. I looked up at the pictures on the mantelpiece. It was his home.

Those were extreme examples, ones that even I could have guessed. A lot of the others, you just never knew. For me, it wasn’t just who was cracking up, but who wasn’t. Does that make sense?

One night in Portland, Maine, we were in Deering Oaks Park, policing piles of bleached bones that had been there since the Panic. Two grunts pick up these skulls and start doing a skit, the one from Free to Be, You and Me, the two babies. I only recognized it because my big brother had the record, it was a little before my time. Some of the older Grunts, the Xers, they loved it. A little crowd started gathering, everyone laughing and howling at these two skulls. “Hi-Hi-I’m a baby.-Well what do you think I am, a loaf a bread?” And when it was over, everyone spontaneously burst into song, “There’s a land that I see…” playing femurs like goddamn banjos. I looked across the crowd to one of our company shrinks. I could never pronounce his real name, Doctor Chandra-something. I made eye contact and gave him this look, like “Hey, Doc, they’re all nut jobs, right?” He must have known what my eyes were asking because he just smiled back and shook his head. That really spooked me; I mean, if the ones who were acting loopy weren’t, then how did you know who’d really lost it?

Our squad leader, you’d probably recognize her. She was in The Battle of the Five Colleges. Remember the tall, amazon chick with the ditch blade, the one who’d sung that song? She didn’t look like she used to in the movie. She’d burned off her curves and a crew cut replaced all that long, thick, shiny black hair. She was a good squad leader, “Sergeant Avalon.” One day we found a turtle in a field. Turtles were like unicorns back then, you hardly saw them anymore. Avalon got this look, I don’t know, like a kid. She smiled. She never smiled. I heard her whisper something to the turtle, I thought it was gibberish: “Mitakuye Oyasin.” I found out later that it was Lakota for “all my relations.” I didn’t even know she was part Sioux. She never talked about it, about anything about her. And suddenly, like a ghost, there was Doctor Chandra, with that arm he always put around their shoulders and that soft, no-big-deal offer of “C’mon, Sarge, let’s grab a cup of coffee.”

That was the same day the president died. He must have also heard that little voice. “Hey, buddy, it’s cool now, you can let go.” I know a lot of people weren’t so into the VP, like there was no way he could replace the Big Guy. I really felt for him, mainly ’cause I was now in the same position. With Avalon gone, I was squad leader.

It didn’t matter that the war was almost over. There were still so many battles along the way, so many good people to say good-bye to. By the time we reached Yonkers, I was the last of the old gang from Hope. I don’t know how I felt, passing all that rusting wreckage: the abandoned tanks, the crushed news vans, the human remains. I don’t think I felt much of anything. Too much to do when you’re squad leader, too many new faces to take care of. I could feel Doctor Chandra’s eyes boring into me. He never came over though, never let on that there was anything wrong. When we boarded the barges on the banks of the Hudson, we managed to lock eyes. He just smiled and shook his head. I’d made it.

GOOD-BYES

Burlington, Vermont

[Snow has begun falling. Reluctantly, “the Whacko” turns back for the house.]

You ever heard of Clement Attlee? Of course not, why should you? Man was a loser, a third-rate mediocrity who only slipped into the history books because he unseated Winston Churchill before World War II officially ended. The war in Europe was over, and to the British people, there was this feeling that they’d suffered enough, but Churchill kept pushing to help the United States against Japan, saying the fight wasn’t finished until it was finished everywhere. And look what happened to the Old Lion. That’s what we didn’t want to happen to our administration. That’s exactly why we decided to declare victory once the continental U.S. had been secured.

Everyone knew the war wasn’t really over. We still had to help out our allies and clear whole parts of the world that were entirely ruled by the dead. There was still so much work to do, but since our own house was in order, we had to give people the option to go home. That’s when the UN multinational force was created, and we were pleasantly surprised how many volunteers signed up in the first week. We actually had to turn some of them away, put them on the reserve list or assign them to train all the young bucks who missed the drive across America. I know I caught a lot of flak for going UN instead of making it an all-American crusade, and to be totally honest, I really couldn’t give a damn. America’s a fair country, her people expect a fair deal, and when that deal ends with the last boots on Atlantic beaches, you shake their hands, pay them off, and let anyone who wants to reclaim their private lives do so.