After this last and seventh panzerpass through, this Camp’s to be closed, Zaol officially decommissioned, demoted to the status of field. Then, to be reconstructed, though first, it has to be cleaned: that’s why this maternal embed’s been ordered, maids to be parachuted in later today. Millionthgeneration transplanted maybe they’re Romans pouring dead into northeastern morning, scorched in the freeze. After all, someone has to pick up after them, and their own mothers, they’re dead…someone has to tidy up, featherdust if fosterly at dawning’s remains: they’ll be dressed appropriately for the wetwork, babushkad in shifts, armed with brooms and mops, dustbusters and vacuums galore. Infantry’ll provide support from the ground, in contact with the cover Above. A winged formation suddenly swoops, everyone raises their heads and gasps deep. Call it the Last Crusade, Support’s saying, those used to be Abulafia bombers — Jerusalem fell in a day. This revamped Holocaust has forced them to reexamine their relationship to regression, technology as the way to best preserve the tradition — we got the best military in the world, Support’s saying, forget that it’s the only one now, all its hardware and more menschs than we know what to do with. Answer me, son — what’s the idea of a past when it’s not invoked against any hostile present? with only them making the history now, imposing the history, with only us left? That wasn’t a question — at ease. Have to rethink, rework, back to the modernly basics — rekindling advancement, the resurrection of progress in light of the exigencies of the pure. It’s inevitably fast, in the wink of an eye. We’ve radared Judea. Behold Samaria in all its missiled glory, which severs the earth from the heavens above. General Support straightens his yarmulke, which is fastened around his head on a leather thong tied with a bow under his chin. As for his driver whose name Support doesn’t remember, never knew — as they slow to a stop, he fingers his tzitzit for luck: they’ve been made to stop bullets; his tefillin are bandoliers, one boxed onto the arm he doesn’t shift with, the other piled atop his head, which is shaved and nodding along. All this is an assimilation. Don’t ask — it feels natural enough.
Goddamnit, General Support yells to himself, he yells everything, can you believe? Their dreck stunk in a week. We didn’t even have to fight over Shabbos…turns to his driver idling their Merc: you ever look deep into those eyes, son, I mean deep, cold and blue, unfeeling, stupid, I’m talking animaldumb? Nothing’s there, empty, knockknock, nobody’s home. He opens his door and jumps out to what’d been base camp HQ, his paunch wobbling crazily on impact, he’s put on twenty pounds since assuming command. He spits another thick wad, on a boot, then steadies himself amid the swirly dust and the skeletal sky, places that boot dripping on the tush of an old pair of uniform pants, issued by the renewed Levi-Strauss. He scans the goy’s number from the label — the name’s “Dowd, Peter Paul,” then radios into the SS, those Scrimpers & Savers, an unofficially cracked, ragbony platoon flown in from Upper Merion’s King of Prussia and Affiliate malls up and down the Siburban seaboard, northeast; the emes, a squad made up of the cheapest rattiest bastards ever raised by the most mental of mothers Rodentia: I’ve got clothes to cash, he says, I’ve got your pants here, your jeans, denim, real nice, say, tenthousand pair, decent condition, need a bit mending, shirts, too, size (checks a few collars from Dowd’s fellow grave) mostly XtraLarge, socks and shoes salvageable, Over, why not. Why’d we bother to clothe them, don’t ask me. Or bathe them and house them or what. I don’t give orders, I follow. Wallets and watches are mine, Over, but you better get here right quick for the organs — this Dowd’s passable young, liver and kidneys’ve got years.
