“And then one day he was gone,” Mike said in a dull, haunted tone. “He left us just like he left you.” The big man shook his head, as if to clear out the darkness inside. “I don’t hold it against him. It’s just how he is.”

“Fuck that,” Topaz spat. “He doesn’t get to do that and not be a son-of-a-bitch. The rest of us have to live with our consciences. He takes a bullet-train to Forgetsville, and that’s fine?”

“It’s not fine,” Mike said, “but it is Roland. We have to take him as he is.”

“You do, maybe. I’m happy cutting the fucker out of my life. You’d do well to do the same, Manny, when he comes back next time.”

“You think there’ll be a next time?” Manny asked.

“Of course.”

“Alright, cut the shit,” Tule said, as they reached the lift that would lead them up to the Main Roller. “Manny’s here for good now. We’ve all got plenty to sniffle over, but it’s time to properly welcome this dumbass to the city.”

“What’s that look like?” Manny asked.

“We’ll probably take some MDMA,” Mike said.

“And I’ve got a couple dozen pounds of dynamite,” Topaz added. “Explosives are stupid fun when you’re rolling.”

“We can toss it while we do donuts in the jeep,” Tule said. “I’ll crack open a case of whippits. We’ll make a night of it.”

Skullfucker Mike squeezed Manny into a bear hug. Topaz joined. And, after a few seconds, so did Tule.

“This is gonna be the best party of your life,” he said. “At least, ’til whatever we do tomorrow.”

Afterword

From 2013 to 2017, my wife and I made a series of questionable decisions that ended with heads full of PTSD and a busted marriage. After the Revolution was written as an act of therapy. Every day I would run a half-marathon and then bury myself in my laptop, writing until I could no longer keep my eyes open. As a result, this book is primarily about trauma, and the different ways people process it.

At the moment, I suspect trauma will be at the center of every book I write. Getting PTSD is a bit like dropping food dye in a glass of water. Just a little bit changes the color of everything around it. The same is true on a larger scale, when we talk about how trauma impacts vast populations of people. I’m writing this now in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, too early to say how the collective trauma of this plague will change the world, but far enough along to know I will not live to see the end of the shockwaves.