The Returned

“You okay, honey? Just checking on you.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m okay.”

There was the light clatter of toys falling down, then the sound of Jacob’s laughter.

They called themselves the Montana True Living Movement. Self-made militants formerly preoccupied with overthrowing the U.S. government and preparing for the race wars that would eventually rock America’s melting pot to its core. But now there was a greater threat, the man from M.T.L.M. said. “There are those of us out here who aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done,” he declared.

The television program turned away from the men in Montana and back to the studio where the silver-haired man looked into the camera, then looked down at a sheet of paper, while across the bottom of the screen were the words Are the Returned a Threat?

He seemed to find the words he had been waiting for. “After Rochester, it’s a question we all have to ask ourselves.”

“If there’s one thing America will always lead the world in,” Harold said, “it’s assholes with guns.”

In spite of herself, Lucille laughed. It was a short-lived laughter, however, because the television had something very important to say and it was not the patient type. The newscaster’s eyes looked uneasy, as though his teleprompter had broken.

“We now go to the president of the United States,” he said suddenly.

“Here it is,” Harold said.

“Shush! You’re just a pessimist.”

“I’m a realist.”

“You’re a misanthrope!”

“You’re a Baptist!”

“You’re bald!”

They went back and forth this way until they caught what the president was saying. “...stay confined to their homes until further notice.” Then the bickering stopped.

“What was that?” Lucille asked.

Then the words were on the bottom of the television screen, just like most information in the modern world. President Orders Returned Confined to Their Homes.

“Dear Lord,” Lucille said, going pale.

* * *

Outside, far away on the highway, the trucks were coming. Lucille and Harold could not see them, but that did nothing to make them any less real. They carried change and irrevocability, consequence and permanency.

They rumbled like thunder over the asphalt, bringing all these things, rumbling toward Arcadia.

Gou Jun Pei

The soldiers helped him from the back of the van and led him silently into a tall, alabaster-colored building with deep, square windows and an overall impression of seriousness about it. He asked them where he was being taken, but they would not answer him, so he soon quit asking.

Inside the building, the soldiers left him in a small room with what looked like a hospital bed in the center. He paced around the room, still tired of sitting from the long ride to wherever he now was.

Then the doctors came in.

There were two of them, and they asked him to sit on the table and, when he was seated, they took turns poking and prodding him. They took his blood pressure and checked his eyes for whatever it was doctors check one’s eyes for. They tested reflexes and drew blood and on and on, all the while refusing to answer his questions when he asked, “Where am I? Who are you? Why do you want my blood? Where is my wife?”