Nothing At All
"And here's Dirk Mannis eating yet another delicious meal consisting of constipation-inducing berries and what can only be called gruel."
Dirk shook his head and continued to quickly spoon the thin, pasty meal into his mouth, ignoring the young man standing before him. 'Can't really call anyone a kid anymore. We've all seen way the hell too much for that.' It wasn't that he disliked Cory Donner. He could be annoying at times, but certainly no more or less so than some of the other of the younger people in the camp. Dirk had just gotten off a double shift on sentry duty and he simply did not want to be bothered by anything except food and his pillow. Sentry duty was not difficult work, but doing so little for so long tended to take a lot out of a person, something which Dirk still had trouble figuring out. It felt like ages since he last ate. Even the "soup," as the guys in charge of cooking called it, tasted good to him right now. At least it was warm, which was more than he could say about the cold, damp morning air that shrouded him like a wet blanket. Dirk wanted to simply eat his meal and go to sleep, not gab with Cory.
"Dirk would say something, I'm sure," Cory continued. "However, this is a family program and about every other word out of his mouth is a cuss word."
Dirk dropped his spoon into his bowl. "Listen, unless you want your vocabulary to include a few words that will make your head explode, back off."
Dirk looked up and nearly spilled his soup into his lap. A look of shock rippled through his stubbled face and he felt a shiver grab him around the back of the neck and spill quickly down his spine. For several seconds, he could do nothing but stare at Cory and what he was holding.
"Jesus Christ, where the hell did you find that?" Dirk finally asked, his voice feeling oddly high-pitched in his own ears.
Cory shook the small video camera in his hand. "What, this? It was in a shop down the street. It actually works too. Lincoln found a couple batteries that worked for it. Even better, Doc Archeville thinks he can build a battery pack from some of that Decepticon tech. Keep a record, you know what I mean?"
Dirk said nothing as he continued to stare at the video camera with a perplexed look on his face. Odd feelings were rising through him, clutching at his throat. Memories of his foster family and what he thought was a perverse fascination with recording each and every family event flashed unbidden through his mind. Memories of times before the Transformers arrived on Earth. As he watched the camera in Cory’s hand, a wave of nostalgia broke over him. He found that he longed for those simply times, when the worst that he had to look forward to was a lecture from Shawn Berger about the evils of vagrancy and the best was some buddies smuggling a six-pack into one of their favorite hangouts. A time when video cameras were high technology and Decepticon-made electro-scramblers were relegated to the land of science fiction. Other memories threatened to surface too, ones he did not want to think about anymore.
Dirk shook the thoughts from his head and opened his mouth to tell Cory to get out his face in the nicest possible way. Before he could say anything, the large frame of John Konstantastos jumped between Dirk and Cory.
“All the way from Kansas City, Kansas, the new singing sensation John… Edward… Konstantastos!”
Then, with an agility that belied his size, John started doing a passable impersonation of Michael Jackson, dancing across the makeshift campsite.
“Billie Jean is not my lover,” he crooned towards the camera and a laughing Cory. “She’s just a girl who says that I am the one. But the kid is not my son.” With that, he started breakdancing back towards Dirk.
Dirk scowled back into his bowl and started spooning the soup back into his mouth. “C’mon, Konnie, knock it off. You’re gonna make my lose my lunch.”
Konnie laughed. “You should pay me for making you lose that lunch.”
“Yeah well,” Dirk said with a shrug, “I have a feeling that it’ll taste even worse the second time through the system.”
Still laughing, Konnie sat down and looked up at Cory and his camera.
“That is something else, isn’t it?” he said, pointing up the black box in the young man’s hand. “Here we are out in the middle of nowhere, and even here we come across a little bauble to remind us of what we’re doing all this crap for.”
Dirk grunted but said nothing.
“I mean, this place is a ghost town,” Konnie continued. “Everybody just up and left and they leave behind stuff like this.” He glanced around at a couple of the vacant houses. “Bet there’s a TV in some of those houses.”
“Somehow I doubt ‘The A-Team’ is going to be on today,” Dirk replied dryly between spoonfuls. “There ain’t nothing to watch anymore.”
“Well, yeah, I know that,” Konnie said lightly. “But if they have a TV, they might have a VCR. If they got a VCR, they might have porn.”
Dirk choked out a laugh and nearly deposited his mouthful of soup onto the damp ground. Cory, too, let out a hoot of laughter, obviously enjoying being a part of conversation. In fact, Dirk had almost forgotten about the video camera. Almost. Before more memories could threaten to invade his mind, he focused back on the conversation.
“Ah,” Dirk replied after he finished coughing, “the logical mind of a 17-year-old male.”
Konnie simply smiled. “Dad always said I was the smart one.”
“Wouldn’t know it considering how you left them and scenic K.C. to join us out here.”
“It was the aroma of paste and chicken broth that drew me in,” he responded, motioning towards Dirk’s bowl.
For several moments, the trio was mostly silent except for a chuckle or two and the spoon scraping the bottom of Dirk’s bowl. Finally, Cory spoke.
“The camera, it reminds me of home.”
Dirk’s bowl dropped out of his hand as the memories he was forcing back finally broke through the wall it had built long ago. ‘Home,’ he thought, as he looked darkly into the camera.
“Does it now? Home? Do you even know what the hell that means? You still are home. Home ain’t a house. It ain’t your neighborhood with everybody watering their damn lawns. Your fuc--,” he stopped, seeing a shocked look spring onto Cory’s face at the word he was about to use. A paused for a second before continuing. “Your parents are right back there. That’s home. You know what I have?”
Konnie suddenly put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. Then, quiet enough so that the camera’s microphone could not pick it up, he said, “You’ve got us, man. Until you find them, you’ve got us.”
Dirk released a trembling breath of air and nodded.
“I know. Don’t know what came over me. Sorry.” He looked up at Cory, and repeated, “Sorry.”
With that, he rose. After shoving his hands deeply into the pockets of his jeans, he trudged towards his tent.
For several moments, Cory simply stared after him through the camera’s lens, barely even noticing that the device was still resting in his hands. Finally, he dropped the camera to his side. He looked imploringly at Konnie, who was still watching Dirk walk away.
“John,” the teenager ventured, “what was that all about?”
Konnie blinked and turned back towards Cory.
“I’m not sure I’m the one to tell you. Let’s just say the Autobots had some particularly crappy timing for ol’ Dirk there and leave it at that.”
Cory simply nodded and trudged away himself, his head lowered in thought. Konnie turned back towards Dirk, who has already slipped into his tent, and shook his head. Only Shawn, Konnie, and J.D., another friend of Dirk’s, knew his secret. Certainly, Dirk’s story was not completely unique. Most of the people within the group had lost family members. All of them had lost friends. ‘It takes a pretty traumatic experience to draw people into a mission like ours,’ he thought. Dirk understood this, Konnie knew, and Dirk never showed his own anguish in front of others. He had told Konnie and J.D. that it would be selfish. After all, he would say, the rest of the people in the group who had family perish at the hands of the Autobots knew their families.
Dirk did not. At least not yet.
But Shawn Berger, using his ties with law enforcement and the facilities of his security company, was literally an hour from finding Dirk’s real family. One hour and Dirk would have finally been able to meet them. But instead, the Autobots chose that moment to strike Central City. His foster family cut and ran, leaving Dirk behind. Some of his friends bolted in a panic, others died in the initial assault. Shawn, J.D., Dirk, and several others banned together and helped who they could before they too were overwhelmed and were forced to flee.
Konnie idly kicked at a stone and drew his jacket around him. Thinking about Dirk’s situation always brought back memories of his own family. They were back in Kansas City, their heads buried in the sand, hoping and praying that the Autobots would just go away. They didn’t understand when Konnie left with Doc Archeville’s group. They begged him to stay. Then, they demanded. Konnie wasn’t sure, but he may have been grounded at some point in the conversation. Still, they were his family. As Dirk would say, they were his home. He was one of the few lucky ones.
“Miss you, Mom,” he whispered. “Miss you, Dad.”
If he listened hard enough, he thought maybe he could hear them. Or maybe it was just the wind.
The End.
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