Freedom by Robyn Braemer, A Short Story

This story was written almost twenty years ago. I pulled it out of the relic pile, dusted it off, and was startled at how relevant the theme is now, maybe even more so than it was twenty years ago. This is the first time it has been published in a public venue.

Freedom

by

Robyn Braemer

Everyone knows about the Mohls, right? It sort of goes without saying since we’ve been under their thumb since the last valiant surrender at Tomahawk. Mohls. The name started out as a joke when the war started. The war started the day the things landed on our soil. It was like Avagrado’s number, enough atoms to fill a pinhead, a mole. They touched down and kept coming.

My name is James. Me, I wasn’t around then but I sure heard the stories. Those old men hanging around the work camp sure loved to talk. There was something in their voices that grabbed me and I’d listen for hours, even though I knew how the story ended.

Yeah, there was something different in the voices of the men who’d been around long enough to fight the Mohls, or remember the fight, than in the voices of us too young to be there. The rest of us spouted our frustration at being under the thumb of the Mohls, even if we didn’t know any other life.

Just like the crew of the Enterprise, we knew the value of freedom. Every week we’d gather around the screen and watch Captain Kirk stand up for freedom. He never died fighting for freedom, not like the buddies of those old men. Freedom was important. Freedom was worth fighting for. Freedom was worth dying for.

They fought for freedom just like Kirk but they died. Sort of like the new faces on the show. Ya never got to know ‘em and they were dead right off the bat. Dead and gone, only brought to battle again and again through the voices of those old men telling their stories with freedom haunting their eyes.

Those Mohls, ugly buggers that they are, they landed on Earth in broad daylight and started the killing without even a chat first. No one in the work camp was near enough to a ship to talk about it firsthand but we heard the stories. Not many survived who were near a ship. It was live coverage though. Lots of people saw ‘em land blasting.

The old men, they don’t talk much about anything being bad before the Mohls came. I know it wasn’t all sugar and spice though. There were wars, right in the cities. People got killed all the time.

There were wars between gangs, and wars over drugs, and wars over religion. I asked old Pete how come people fought wars because someone didn’t think the same way as someone else if there was freedom before the Mohls came and old Pete, he looked me right in the eye and he said that that was freedom.

There was something different in his voice when he said that. Something different from us too young to remember the war with the Mohls, something different from the old men telling their war stories. There was passion and conviction in his voice when he said that was freedom and that feeling resonated with me.

I watched the old shows on the screen, calling up lots of old news shows. The Mohls cross-referenced everything so it was easy enough finding programs. Well, I meant to watch the old news shows. That was before someone lost the remote and for months only repeats of classic Star Trek shows played on the screen.

Things got busy for a while and I had too much to do to spend every afternoon watching the screen but I still thought about it a lot, like when I was pushing loads of wet cement from the mixer to the foundation site on a real hot day, and when the sweat was running down my back while I was stacking lumber, easy labor with not much need to concentrate. The days passed pretty fast then and I started to forget about old Pete’s words but something about the expression on his face when he said it, that stayed with me.

It took about a month for us to build the house. When we were done there was lots of food and beer and we hung around and ate and drank until it was an effort to crawl back to the bus two days later to return to camp.

I noticed that Bob and Ted didn’t catch the bus. They’d have a long walk. The new owners of the house would probably let them stay a few more days but then pack them a lunch and point out the direction of the camp.

That gal was sure sweet. Maggie. She smelled good, too. She smelled like fresh air and sunshine. Her husband kept calling her Maggie May just to see her face get all red. They’d only been married a few months and they’d picked a spot out of town for their house because he was a vet and she was a potter.

It made me feel funny inside watching them together. That kind of funny where you hope you can have chocolate ice cream like the guy walking away from the head of the line just when you hear someone say there’s something wrong with the machine. Vanilla is all right when it’s really hot and twist might be better yet, but that guy with the chocolate sure looked happy and you know you’ll only be happy with chocolate.

So Bob and Ted wandered into camp the next day. Bill passed around the rest of the chocolate chip cookies Maggie had sent back with them. Old Pete sort of flipped out. Maybe those cookies triggered something in him. I just know that he flipped, yelling about being pets and dog biscuits. That brought the Mohls. It’s sort of spooky when they come.

Old Pete, he’d crawled up on one of those trailers, the flat ones for hauling lumber and pipes. He was yelling and waving his arms. Spittle went flying from his mouth. I don’t really know what he was saying, some mumbo-jumbo about loving God for freedom and kill all the non-believers.

I didn’t even know that old Pete was a religious man. It freaked me out. Made me feel all icky inside watching him make a fool of himself like that. Then the Mohls were there. Just walked in without a word and picked up old Pete like he was a frozen scarecrow, his arms and legs sticking straight out.

I don’t know what made me do it. Probably that little voice that only pops into my head when I’m caught off guard so I think it’s myself thinking but I’m pretty sure if it was me I’d have said to stare at the ground until they passed. But I listened to that voice and I stepped right into the path of a Mohl, one not carrying a piece of old Pete. I looked up. Way up. Those Mohls were tall fellows and I picked a really tall one.

“Where are you taking Pete?” I asked. I like to think my voice sounded full of authority but I heard the crackle.

The Mohls carrying Pete stopped. His arms and legs waved and he screamed obscenities but they held him easy enough. They all just stood there, staring down at me. The one I stopped whistled and clicked, kind of like a radio station that wouldn’t come in. They never blinked, those Mohls. It stood and stared, clicking and making static noises while my face got all hot and it struck me that when they were done with old Pete I’d be next.

“Hospital,” the thing said at last.

Then they started walking again. Once they were out of sight the camp went back to normal. I hadn’t really noticed that everyone sort of froze in place until they all started moving again. Bill came up to me and started talking about how he wanted a house like the one we’d just built and would I help. I sort of listened to him, nodding that I’d help build it but my head kept going to old Pete.

“What do you think they’ll do to him?” I asked.

“What? Oh, old Pete. Pump him full of happy pills and slap a diaper on him,” Bill said. He grinned. 

“Didn’t you know he was pissing everywhere? Started doing it in his pants when we were gone. Crazy old coot.”

I hadn’t known. I glanced at the gate where they’d taken him. There weren’t really fences around the work camp but the west side had a big wall with a gate and that’s where they’d gone, carrying old Pete.

They had a complex over there, lots of buildings and hangers. I’d done the curiosity tour when I was a kid and then just to the camp. We’d snuck into the complex, looked around, and then hightailed it out of there. I don’t remember much. I was so nervous I was more afraid I’d pee my pants than anything the Mohls would do if they caught us.

Mostly I remember huge buildings and people all sparkling clean wearing clothes without any stains or wrinkles. I guess I forgot to even pay much attention going in and out of the camp. It was just there.

“Where’s the hospital?” I asked Bill, suddenly having this wild idea of storming the complex and rescuing us all.

“A few miles down the road,” Bill said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter. Ted wandered up to us and Bill nodded at him.

“Poor old Pete,” Ted said.

“Freedom,” I muttered. “He needed freedom.”

Ted snorted. “Then he shouldn’t have gone all crazy.”

“They shouldn’t have taken him,” I muttered, looking around nervously. Bob was heading our way and a few people were looking over at us.

“Who? The Mohls?” Bill said. “If it was you who woke up to his pissing in your face you’d be thanking ‘em.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to get up on a high place, that pile of crates or the hood of the old two-tone truck sitting with its hubs buried in weeds, and once up there where everyone could hear me, make ‘em listen.

It was about tyranny, the fight for freedom. What would they do to old Pete? What was to stop ‘em from coming for any of us? Were we really the Mohls’ pets?

I must have said the last part out loud because Bill and Ted looked at each other than Ted said, 

“You’ve been listening to that old Pete too much. He’s nuts. Get it? Nuts!”

“What about freedom?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t know freedom if it bit you in the ass,” Ted said, shaking his head. “These old men that sit here and gripe, they gripe about everything. They’re here for the three squares but hate the Mohls. If it’s too hot it’s the Mohls’ fault. If it’s raining when they want to sit outside and watch the screen it’s the Mohls’ fault.”

I walked away. It dawned on me that they must be in on it. It was up to me to save them, save old Pete, save us all. I heard that voice, that one that pops out sometimes and I know I shouldn’t listen but I always do. It was up to me to get rid of the Mohls. Once I did that we’d be free.

It was pretty easy. I had some sort of super rush going. I didn’t think about anything but getting rid of the Mohls and I walked through their buildings, ducking when I spotted someone, running when I had to. It went smoothly.

Stupid Mohls thought they were safe from us mere Earthlings. There were no guards, no alarms. I breezed through the whole compound without being stopped once.

Along the way I made little surprises. Barrels of gasoline were stacked along the wall in one hanger. I opened several and stuffed rags in the holes. I spotted a propane tank and fixed that to blow. Everywhere I went I found ways to destroy them.

I spent the whole night getting it done. By morning my super rush was over and I had a doubt or two. Until I saw a Mohl walk by. They were such ugly buggers. Our world was better off without them. The thing stopped when it saw me. I grinned as I lit the rag I’d stuffed in a bottle of gasoline and tossed it. They weren’t going to get me.

The rest was sort of a blur. The Mohl tackled me and I guess I hit my head. I came to in a bed in a bare room. A woman was staring at me. Not too happy. I grinned. She’d be happy when she had a taste of freedom.

“Your name?” she asked.

“James,” I said.

“Well, James, you’re in some deep shit,” she said.

She wasn’t just not too happy. She was super charged angry. I learned later that she was Captain or Colonel Judy Maygreth. She’s the one who told me to write down why I fired the compound. I found out that the compound didn’t belong to the Mohls. It belonged to us. It was what kept our work camp going.

Some of it was saved. The Mohls had smelled the gas and propane and come to investigate. I killed seven Mohls and nine humans and destroyed a few thousand gallons of gasoline and five buildings, two which were storehouses and three hangers full of equipment, vehicles, and spare parts.

I felt so bad about what had happened that my chest hurt so bad that I thought I’d quit breathing. I couldn’t sleep for almost a week and they gave me a shot in the rear and I slept but I had nightmares.

I hadn’t thought about killing people. All I’d thought about was getting rid of the Mohls. I didn’t expect to kill anyone. Well, if the Mohls went in that fire fine, because they weren’t anyone. It was about freedom. We fight for freedom. It’s in our nature to want to be free. You can’t taste it or smell it or hold it but it’s there and it’s real.

Old Pete wasn’t in the hospital. I asked about him right away. After a day they gave him some medication and sent him to his family. I didn’t even know old Pete had family. Colonel Judy (she gets really pissed when I call her Colonel Judy) said he only acted up when he touched the booze.

Odd to think of old Pete as having family. I felt cheated that he wasn’t chained to a wall in a dirty, stinky cell with the Mohls doing experiments on him. It felt too normal, too everyday normal to just give him a shot and send him home to his family and let them deal with him..

What had happened wasn’t everyday normal. It made me look bad. It made me look like the crazy one.

I had to talk to a lot of people a lot of times. I passed my twentieth birthday there waiting for them to decide what to do with me. They asked a lot of questions, like what I had planned to do next. I hadn’t really planned anything. Did I realize how many Mohls there were in a mole? A lot? Did I know what Avagrado’s number was? A lot. How did I plan to kill that many Mohls? It just made me confused. I hadn’t planned anything more than getting rid of the Mohks.

When I pointed out that the Mohls had destroyed our world they were the ones confused. Turns out the Mohls did not arrive and destroy our world. According to the people who kept me locked up in the room while they decided what to do with me, the Mohls arrived after we had tried to destroy our own world and had helped save what was left.

I don’t know how right or wrong that is. If they’re just the Mohls’ pets they’ll say anything right? When I subtly told them they were liars they told me that the men in the camp had not even been alive yet when the Mohls arrived. I had to think about that.

If the old men in the work camp hadn’t been alive yet when the Mohls arrived then the people who came in to ask me all their questions hadn’t been alive yet either and maybe they didn’t know the facts. They tried their best to convince me that the Mohls had not arrived and destroyed whole cities but I wasn’t having any of that.

Finally one day they put a plastic ring around my ankle and sent me back to the camp. If I wasn’t working for the camp I had to go back to the hospital and work. All my credits went to paying for the damage I’d done.

I’d figured it out and I don’t think I’ll be done paying after I’m dead if I live to be a hundred. Dealing with the families of the people who died, well, that one’s too tough to write about. They were just there working, minding their own business. I have to take a pill to sleep every night now.

About two weeks after returning to camp it hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. I was walking by the screen and Captain Kirk was lecturing another alien race on mankind’s need for freedom. I stopped in my tracks. The ring on my ankle gave a warning tickle. I was late.

I stared at Kirk’s sweating face on the screen. Ya just didn’t know what freedom was until ya lost it. Damned if it wasn’t just a television show.

Copyright © 2017 by Robyn Braemer

Published by Halstad House

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.

All rights reserved.

No part of this story may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.