There was a thunderous boom in the distance that shook the ground. Sammy watched as a bunny, under a bush, paused, startled, then immediately returned to mindlessly chewing grass in a way only prey instinctively do.
"God!" her date, Josh, exclaimed from beside her on the blanket. "I will never get used to that."
"Huh?" Sammy picked up the limp sandwich before her and took a bite before adding, "Oh yeah, you aren't from here."
"Yeah, it's like living in a fucking war zone."
He gave a look Sammy recognized from many men before: the
expectant pause, the slight lift of his eyebrows, the silent demand that she
make him feel charming. She obliged with a soft, short chuckle, light and
superficial and solely for his benefit.
“There,” he said. “See? You do have a sense of humor."
What would happen if she didn't laugh? She didn't know. She always had.
He wasn't wrong.
There was an undercurrent of urban violence that permeated the city, which was propped up by an active military installation—an arsenal—where rockets and bombs were developed, tested, and stored. Sammy had long grown used to the distant test explosions, low-flying, loud Black Hawk helicopters ushering
Maybe it was weird, but it was all she had known.
“Hey, Sammy!” Josh snapped his fingers twice in front of her
face. When she flinched, he grinned. “You disappeared on me.”
“Sorry. My mind was just wandering.”
“I noticed.” He kept his hand raised for another moment before lowering it.
"Well, I did this all for you." He motioned around them, which checked every box of a romantic picnic: blanket, park, sunshine, food, flowers, even little bunnies hopping and grazing on grass in the distance, yet it all felt flat and gray. All the ingredients were there, yet the cake had baked wrong.
The sun seemed to shine a little brighter, warming the air around them. Shaking her head to brush away her thoughts, Sammy then touched Josh's knee. "It's amazing, Josh. I love it."
"So what's it like to grow up here? What's your craziest story?" Josh asked, leaning in to pick up a baby carrot and snap it in half with his incisors.
Sammy considered thoughtfully what would count as her craziest story, but seemed to have only one moment circling her mind—hardly a crazy moment at all.
"Well, it's not crazy. Just different from wherever you came from. But when I was in college, I worked for a catering company, and we would do events: corporate events, birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, whatever. And there was some event for the MDA—"
"Wait," Josh interrupted. "What is MDA?"
"Missile Defense Agency? It's part of the DOD, the Department of Defense, you know, like there's the Army and Navy and whatever, but there are way more departments. It's not just service branches."
"Okay. So what happened at the event?"
"Nothing really. I mean, there was a buffet of hors d'oeuvres, little egg quiche tartlets and mini sausages in a pastry crust, and fruit platters, an open bar. Normal. Some bigwig in a fancy uniform gave a speech about the improvement of some missile. And he showed videos of it in action. It was like the desert, and he would point out the target. It showed the missile deployed, then hitting the target. They had met their goal of 'one shot, one kill.' Then there was a round of applause, and the whole room started chanting, 'One Shot! One Kill! One Shot! One Kill!'" She mimicked the rhythmic, drumlike chant and closed her eyes, seeing the room now, even the centerpieces with white roses and pale pink baby's breath.
"Anyway," she continued, "it wasn't crazy at all. It's just different from what you are used to. I mean, you probably came from a town like what's on every other TV show, and yeah, there isn't a ton of military, but, like, the reason you can have that—we all can have that—is that it protects us. All those weapons, the brave warfighters, they keep us safe. That's why we are free."
Sammy heard Josh scoff and shift as he asked, "You really believe that?"
She had not really analyzed it too much. She had always heard it told this way, and so she, in turn, repeated the fact. Yet the sunshine, the blanket on the lush green grass, the bunny hopping to a happy yellow dandelion and chewing peacefully all seemed to convey safety. If they weren't protected, would they be here on some first date?
"Just look at your story. It shows how wrong it all is.
That 'one shot, one kill' bullshit. That's why we've been in back-to-back wars.
It's so sanitized. They want a button to press." Josh used his pointer
finger to push an imaginary button in front of him and then splayed out his
fingers into a small, explosive form of jazz hands. "Poof. All gone. And
they don't even want to press the button twice. They want it as easy to kill as
possible. But that's not nature. We are meant to see, feel, own a kill. Have it
weigh on us. Like..." He glanced around. "Think about it this way:
You eat meat, right? You just go to the drive-through and get a box of chicken
nuggets. But wouldn’t you eat less meat if you had to look that chicken in
the eye, strangle it with your own hands, feel the life and struggle give out?”
As he said it, Josh reached toward her wrist and loosely
closed his fingers around it, demonstrating the pressure. He released her
almost immediately.
“Sorry,” he said, though he did not sound sorry. “Just making the point.”
As he spoke, Sammy shuddered at each new sentence, some revulsion and queasiness building in the pit of her stomach. "I suppose then I'd be a vegetarian."
"Oh, don't be dramatic. You'd probably still eat meat, still go for the kill, but you would really weigh whether it was necessary. Only when you really needed it. You wouldn't be a quick draw then, would you?" Josh pushed back his hair in a debonair, nonchalant fashion that Sammy had always associated with the boy-band member marketed as the "bad boy."
As she was considering the possibility of a second date with him, Josh reached over and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. Sammy held still. He had not asked, but the gesture was gentle enough that objecting would have made her seem dramatic.
From the corner of her eye, a hawk, with precise speed and focus, descended upon the bunny and snatched it up with its talons. A screech cut through the scene, fur and blood flew, and the bird was again in the air, too far away for Sammy to see. The entire brutal act took mere seconds, and her heart was racing.
"Like that. That was a hungry bird. Not a bored bird. Not an insecure bird wanting claps and chants. And yeah, that was one shot, one kill. But that bird would have kept going if it had to. It's just not survival if it's easy."
A silence hung low in the air. The sun was descending, the sky darkening, and the shadows cast by the trees growing longer. Sammy began the awkward, extended farewell familiar from first dates, when both people tested whether the evening would end in a kiss, a hug, another date, sex, or some other outcome one of them had hoped for.
She could feel his hesitancy as he escorted her from the
park, blanket folded and tucked under her arm. “Look, uh, Josh. This was
nice. You know, I’d like to see you again,” she said as she reached for the
car-door handle.
Josh did not move away from the car. He looked at her hand,
then at her face.
“You’re leaving already?”
“It’s getting late.”
“Well, you aren’t done seeing me now.”
His voice had lost its teasing quality. He placed one hand
against the car above her shoulder, blocking the door without touching her.
The tone of his voice and the look on his face were
unrecognizable to Sammy, but her body seemed to move faster than her mind. Josh
lunged toward her, one hand reaching for her shoulder and the other bracing
against the car.
Sammy threw the blanket into his face.
He cursed and grabbed at the wool covering his eyes. Sammy
reached for the door handle, but Josh caught her wrist.
She pulled backward. He pulled harder.
Her free hand found his throat. She shoved him away, trying
to make space, but he kept hold of her wrist and came with her. Her fingers
closed around his neck. She squeezed because she could not think of anything
else to do.
Josh made a wet, startled sound beneath the blanket. His
grip on her wrist tightened once, then loosened. Sammy felt the change. He was
no longer pulling her toward the car. He was trying to pull her hand away.
She kept squeezing.
His hands moved searching for her. Then they fell against her arms without strength. His body sagged, heavy and sudden, and slid to the ground with a hard smack.
All Sammy could feel in that moment was her heartbeat. The park, the picnic, the bunnies, the hawk, the world was gone—just her heartbeat, the rushing blood pumping through her veins, and the motionless body, its head wrapped in plaid, woven wool.
She leaned down and felt a faint pulse, but perhaps it was still just her beating heart.
"Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck," she whispered to herself as her shaking hand opened the car door and she sped off.
Driving home slowly and steadily, glancing into the rearview mirror too many times and switching on the turn signal too early, she told herself he was just passed out. That it was her or him. He attacked her; it was self-defense.
As she pulled into her driveway, another test explosion, closer this time, rattled the windows, and she thought about all that money—billions of dollars—all those missiles and tests, Humvees, soldiers, and generals. A waste. In the end, the only thing that protected her was her own two hands.
The danger wasn't some distant nation, terrorist, or big
plot—just fucking Josh from Tinder in a parking lot.
