Prologue: Memphis

“Ok, I’ll start the recording now. This is TRC field interview number 232. Can you state your name please?” 

“Lemarcus Sykes.”

“How old are you, Mr. Sykes?”

“Twenty-nine, last I checked.”

“And where do you live?”

“They got me holed up in a trailer in the camp in Millington right now. I had to take the bus down here.”

“But you lived in Memphis as of last May?”

“That’s right.”

“And you were a witness to what took place at the Harrahan Bridge on the afternoon of May 5th, 2041?”

“I was there, yeah. My friend and me, we walked down there.”

“Why were you in the area of the bridge?”

“We heard there was food, medicine, other stuff folks was bringing across from Arkansas. Everybody said it was Red Cross or something. And my friend’s girl, she had diabetes. She had to take those insulin shots every day. She hadn’t had one in, like, six days around then. I told him it was too far and we were gonna get in trouble before we got there, but he was worried she could die. So I went with him to help out, try to look out for him, you know?”

“Where were you coming from?”

“Parkway Village. We had an apartment over there.”

“And you walked to the riverfront? That’s a long way isn’t it?

“Yeah, took us most of the day. I had a car but you couldn’t take that risk. They had these roadblocks everywhere. Easier to stay out of people’s way if you on foot.”

“These were RAC roadblocks you were worried about?”

“I don’t know, man, maybe some of them. I think it was mostly just folks in these neighborhoods trying to keep people out they don’t like the look of. And if they really don’t like the look of you, they don’t even stop you, they just start popping off. We heard about people that got killed like that. Maybe Sammy would have had better luck without me, I don’t know. We wanted to be careful so we stayed off all the big roads.”

“This is Sam Culver, your friend and your roommate, correct.”

“Yes sir. We lived together. Worked together too, for the city, parks and rec, driving mowers and whatnot, you know. Before. And uh, when everything went to shit we was together every day, just trying to make it. Finding food and other stuff we needed, keeping an eye on folks in the neighborhood.”

“Let’s get back to May 5th. Why do you say he’d have had better luck getting through the roadblocks?”

“Sammy’s a white dude.”

“I see. So you and Mr. Culver spent most of the day walking across the city before you got to the bridge. Can you tell me anything about what you saw while you were doing that?”

“Just a lot of mess. Hardly anybody out. Fires every few blocks, nobody doing nothing about it. Store windows busted out, but I guess they did most of that back in April when it started getting serious.”

“And did you…”

“We saw some bodies. Two dudes in the middle of Quince, looked like they been shot and just laying there for hours. And we walked by this burned up car on an interstate ramp. There was somebody in there, couldn’t tell you if it was a man or woman or what at that point. We went around Orange Mound ‘cause we heard they got hit hard over there, but, uh, a couple of times we heard those big guns shooting over our heads.”

“And when did you get to the riverfront?”

“Five o’clock maybe. I know it was getting later but it was still damn hot. Somebody said a hundred degrees that day. Early May, you believe that? We had some water we brought with us but we kept having to stop in the shade. Almost fell out one time.”

“What did you see when you got there?”

“Army guys. They had trucks and sandbags  and some kind of missiles set up on, like a tank, in the park over there by the bridge. And there was other people like us coming in to get help. Started to be a lot of people. Maybe a couple of hundred. Some of them were hurt real bad, clothes all tore up and bleeding. And everybody was thirsty. At first they kept everybody back. A couple of them Natty soldiers was throwing some bottled waters over at us. These guys in the crowd started fighting over one.”

“Did you see the convoy coming across?”

“Yeah. I was confused at first ‘cause I saw the interstate bridge down there was shot up. Like, you could see through it in a bunch of places, and it had those metal rods sticking out of the concrete. But then I saw the, uh, convoy was coming across one of those other two bridges right near there, you know, the railway bridges. I guess they laid some kind of pavement down . And there were the aid people and the doctors coming over on pickup trucks and four-wheelers.”

“And those vehicles were clearly marked?”

“I believe so. Painted white and everything. Didn’t look like army to me, either side.”

“What happened next?”

“People started to run out there on the bridge, to beat everybody else, I guess. And the soldiers just let everybody go. People went out there and kinda swarmed around the trucks in the middle of the bridge so they could get food and water or get to one of the ambulances.”

“But you didn’t go out on the bridge?”

“I was gonna, me and Sammy both, but this one dude with sunglasses stops me. Officer. His uniform says Lopez, I think. And he asked me where I was coming from. I say Parkway Village, and he has two guys with guns pull me out and they make me go inside a little prefab building they got in the park. They let Sammy go though.”

“Do you know why you were detained?”

“Well I was thinking, this is it, these people gonna kill me. But he starts asking me questions about this, uh, paper, like a flier, that was going around our neighborhood. He showed it to me. It was saying the Natties are criminals and KKK and all of this, and how people need to rise up. He wanted to know who was spreading that around. But I never knew nothing about it.”

“Were you tortured?”

“Tortured? No, except sitting in that little shack in the heat, I guess. Couldn’t hardly breathe.”

“Ok. What happened then?”

“After a while the guy talking to me leaves. Shuts me in there. And five minutes later, maybe, I start hearing this racket.”

“What were you hearing?”

“Plane going overhead, real loud and close. People hollering and running around. Some other kind of noise, like a *whoosh*. I think maybe they shot one of those missiles at it.”

“Did you see anything?”

“There was this little window in that building they had me locked in. I walked over there and I looked out, and I think for just a second I got a look at that plane when it was bugging out.”

“What did that aircraft look like, Mr. Sykes? Did it have any markings you could identify?”

“I just caught the back, you know. It was black.  Didn’t look like anything I saw before. It had, uh, well it looked like it had some little fins sticking off the sides. I seen a lot of things flying over Memphis back then but that was different, so I noticed it.”

“Did you noticed anything else?”

“Well no, because then there was this light.” 

“A light?”

“Yeah, and, I, uh, I couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear either, except this ringing. And it was like all the wind was knocked out of me. I kept choking. And after I while I figured out I was on the ground and what was left of that building was all over me. Got to where I could sorta see again, and I had all these little cuts and burns on my arms, and uh, my face, as you can see. Little slivers of glass all over me. But I could move.”

“And what did you see when you got up?”

“I ain’t talked about it before.”

“I see.”

“Well, there was this cloud. Dark grey, where the bridge used to be. Like a mushroom cloud. And I thought somebody for real dropped the A-Bomb on Memphis. But I didn’t know what it was then. I found out later.”

“Were there other survivors around?”

“There was people still alive. Couldn’t tell you how many of them still are. First person I saw was that Lopez dude, and the only reason I could tell it was him was ‘cause of that name tag. I think maybe he was alive, at the time. I think about it now, and I guess I owe him one, for putting me where he did.”

“What did you do next?”

“Went looking for Sammy in the park. There were some other folks out there doing the same thing, looking for people. Screaming names. Most of them looked in way worse shape than me. Saw this white girl, young, probably would have been pretty, and her shirt looked like it, like, melted onto her back. Anyway, I couldn’t see for shit with all that smoke. But Sammy was on the bridge, I guess. Probably best he was. I, uh…you know what that kind of bomb does to a person?”

“I’m…I’m not an expert.”,

“Well I read about it, later on. Of course, if you right under the fuel cloud, you just gone. But, if somebody is a little farther away, all that fire and pressure, it sucks the air straight out of you, and your lungs just go *pop*.” 

“Ok, so after…”

“Jesus, I seen people like that. Don’t know why it wasn’t me. Jesus.”

….

“It’s uh, ok, if you need to take a minute.”

“You believe people can do that to other people? Other Americans, even? Jesus.”