by Mark Tufo
He had worked through many a natural disaster with the bulk of them, risking their lives together, and now he had betrayed them. He had betrayed the only family he had and for what? A pretty face? Was that it? No! It was more than that! It had to be, right? He had a wife and a son that he knew he would never see again, but still the treachery that these men, HIS men, felt that he had created was the knife that twisted in his side. And what pushed the knife even deeper were the results he had achieved.
The two women whose aid he had galloped toward were in no better shape than if he had done nothing at all. Deb died and Beth would soon. At this point, he only hoped it would be quick for her. There was no telling what the colonel had in mind, for either of them. Colonel Masterson showed up almost as if he knew he was the subject of the sergeant’s thoughts.
“How are you doing, soldier? I hope the accommodations are up to snuff,” the colonel said as he lit his pipe. The pungent smell of sweet hickory wafted through the cell. The sergeant never cared for the smell of that tobacco and right now was no exception.
“I know you didn’t come down here to see how I was doing,” the sergeant said as he righted himself, doing his best not to let the colonel see him wince as he attempted to stand amidst all the bruising and beating that his body had endured.
“I hope my men, haven’t treated you too unfairly,” the colonel added as he watched his pipe smoke drift away. “Why’d you do it, Grady? And please don’t tell me that you threw away everything for a piece of tail.” The colonel had yet to look over at him. The sergeant wrestled with his thoughts, unsure if he should answer the colonel or not; but at that point, he figured why not? He couldn’t do anything worse than what he'd already done to himself.
“They needed help,” he said bleakly.
“So you wanted to play the knight in shining armor, eh?”
Is the bastard reading my thoughts? “I guess maybe it was something like that, sir.”
Now the colonel did look in his direction, almost as if to say, 'How dare you call me that. You lost that privilege.' But no words were exchanged.
“I had a split second to think, sir.” There it was again, but this time, the colonel put his poker face on and completely ignored the affront. “They were in trouble and, at the time, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I’ve been thinking about all that has happened in the last few days, Colonel, and I can’t say that if it happened again, I would not do the same thing. I honestly think, that I would. Maybe it’s a character flaw on my part. I don’t know, there was something about those girls that compelled me to help them.”
“And what of the second girl?” the colonel interjected.
“She died from her wounds.”
The colonel merely nodded. “And so, what have you gained, Sergeant?” The sergeant could now see why the colonel had risen so far and fast in the officer’s ranks. This man was intuitive to a fault.
“Nothing sir, I have gained nothing. And I have lost everything,” the sergeant said with his head bowed low.
“Your execution will occur two days from now, at dawn,” the colonel stated. The sergeant’s head shot back up. He knew it was coming but it still surprised him.
“Why no trial, sir? We both know the outcome of that avenue, but I still deserve that.”
“You lost your right to that the moment you pulled the trigger, Sergeant. You WILL have your say, but your words, by and large, will fall on deaf ears.” The colonel took one last puff of his pipe and turned to head out.
“Sir, I’m sorry.” The sergeant said as the colonel stopped briefly.
“So am I, Sergeant, so am I,” the colonel said as he resumed his exit.
***
Beth, for the most part, was left alone that day and much of the next. Her only contact with the outside world was the occasional tray of food that was slid under her door. The colonel never bothered to stop in and tell Beth that her fate was to be determined or predetermined in forty-eight hours. He saw no need to waste his time on the civilian woman who cost the lives of two of his men. When Beth’s dinner arrived the second night, she shouted to her delivery person.
“Please let me talk to Sergeant O’Bannon.” She sounded so pathetic, even to herself; it was no act, it was how she felt. Private Monroe had been warned to do nothing with the woman except drop off her meals, but he hated to see anything suffer, much less her.
As a child, Monroe set up a pretty good facility for dealing with strays throughout his neighborhood. If anyone had a bird with a broken wing or a lost cat, Monroe was sure to nurse it back to health or find the previous owner. In many cases, much to his mother’s chagrin, he would keep the animal for himself. He intended to go to veterinarian assistance school after graduation, but never succeeded. Without a father and with his mother barely making ends meet by slinging hash at the local greasy spoon, the money was just not there. The National Guard promised him a GI bill to pay for his schooling. They even offered tuition reimbursement.
He never got the chance to even enroll before the aliens struck, he had never, ever signed up for the crap that was going down now. He killed at least three people in the last raid against the unit, and it had deeply affected him. He always thought he’d been put on the earth for a loftier purpose, to save animals. Actually, to save anything that needed saving. He was not so altruistic that he would risk his life for anybody else’s, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least somehow try to console the girl.
“Ma’am I can’t do that.” Beth was taken aback that somebody, anybody had addressed her. “I can get you a paper and pen, if you want to send him a letter.” Beth nodded her head in ascent.
“What’s going to happen to us?” she asked, pleading.
“I’m not sure,” he lied. Beth saw it in his eyes.
“You can’t let them kill us. We did nothing wrong.” The private’s face drained as he realized she had read his thoughts as if he had verbalized it. When Beth saw his face change, she knew the truth beyond a doubt. Tears silently streamed down her face. Private Monroe had seen that look a hundred times in the faces of the animals he tried to protect. It was shock, plain and simple.
“Listen, there is going to be a trial tomorrow for you. You’ll have the opportunity to have your side heard. And who knows?” he shrugged. They both knew tacitly that she had a better chance of playing with rabid dogs and not getting bit than she did of getting any semblance of a fair trial.
“For me?” The implication was clear; there would be no trial for Sergeant O’Bannon. Beth could hardly believe what was happening.
“I’ll go get the paper and pen,” Private Monroe said as he moved as quickly away from the unsettling conversation as possible. He returned moments later, but Beth had curled herself up on her cot with her back to the bars.
“Ma’am? Do you want the paper?” The private said as he put his hand through the cell. Beth didn’t so much as stir. The private wanted to leave the paper there but that could land him in hot water and he had no desire to get on the wrong side of the colonel, especially right now. He turned to go back to his station. Two more hours of guard duty and one more long, sleepless night, he lamented to himself.
Beth didn’t touch her dinner that night and her dreams seemed to reflect the emptiness inside her. During her fits of sleep, which weren’t interrupted by cold sweats, she dreamed of Deb and Mike. They both had a very ethereal quality. They were bathed in bright white light and seemed so happy together. Love reigned all around them. Deb was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning.
It panged Beth that Mike also seemed so happy. She looked for some sign in his mannerisms that something was missing, or rather, someone. But he kept smiling and laughing and stroking Deb’s long, blonde hair. Then it happened; she got the sign she had eagerly thought she had been waiting for, Mike looked squarely at Beth and told Deb how much he loved her.
Beth woke with a start. The sun was beginning its rise, but it would offer no warmth to her, not today.
&nbs
p; The day dragged on for the sergeant. Just sitting idly, waiting for the inevitable, was brutal. He tried repeatedly to come up with some sort of defense to save his skin. Every avenue he pursued came up for naught. He knew he had let his men down. Even if what they were doing was wrong, he was still under orders and had disobeyed those orders. Worse yet, he had ultimately got his Lieutenant killed. It didn’t matter that, almost to a man, nobody liked the LT. He was still a National Guardsman and needed to be cared for as much as the next soldier.
The sergeant wished that the trial was today, so that the firing squad would be greeting him tomorrow morning instead of the next. But this was, more than likely, all planned out by the colonel also. Just letting him sit there, contemplating his abbreviated future, was infinitely worse than execution. Sergeant O’Bannon had always wondered what death row inmates thought about while they awaited their executions. “Bad choice of words,” he mouthed.
Did they regret the choices they made that landed them in their particular predicament? Did they long for simpler times? Did they dream about stays of execution? None of those things, however, occupied his mind now. Mostly, he thought about his wife and his son, and how were they going to get along now, without him. Even when he had been on the run with Beth, he figured, at some point, he would be able to steal away to his suburban home and see them again. And then what?
He knew Meg was raised a military brat, her father traipsing around the world with his family. And Meg loved every minute of it. She loved the fact that her father protected ‘the American Way of Life’, as he liked to call it. Meg herself would have joined up if not for a broken condom in the back of the sergeant’s 1974 Chevy Impala. That put a real damper on her dreams, but when the sergeant decided to enlist, her whole world brightened up.
She was going to be in the service of the “Service,” if only by proxy. That mattered little to her. Sergeant O’Bannon was never really sure if she loved him or the uniform. Now all of that mattered little, she had turned her back on him. And rightfully so, he added. He WAS a traitor, and he had brought shame onto her and his family.
She would do her best to distance herself as much as possible from him. She would not come to see him in his final hours and for that, and that alone, he wept. His decision at the time had been the right one, he felt that in his core.
Beth alternated between pacing her cell floor and curling up on her cot. She knew if this dragged on too long, she would more than likely go insane. “Not much chance of that, though,” she whispered. With each ticking of the clock, she was one-second closer to death; and, not for a moment, did she think that Mike would be coming on a white steed to save her. He was literally hundreds of thousands of miles away and had his own problems.
At that same moment, however, Mike was on his bed, thinking about her. She knew it in her heart; she could feel it, even from all that distance. And she was right.
The day passed quickly, though the clock never seemed to move. As the shadows lengthened, so did the blackness that inhabited the sergeant’s heart. The night ended much like it had on every U.S. installation for the better part of two centuries. The mournful wail of Taps was played over the loud speakers and everyone caught outdoors stood at the position of attention while they waited for the colors to be ceremoniously unfurled and folded.
Then something unexplained happened before the final note of Taps had been blown. Men scattered in various directions as the base alarm blared. 'Well, that wasn’t on the itinerary,' the sergeant thought, bemusedly. 'Maybe it’s the cavalry, although they were a little early.'
Sirens wailed on but the sergeant had no idea what was happening. Still, his interest was piqued; what else was there to do but wait for a bullet with his name on it? The sirens grew blisteringly loud, but louder still was the low thunderous sound of what? Engines? What kind? And how many? It was impossible to distinguish anything, but it was safe to say there were plenty.
“Private Monroe!” the sergeant yelled, after the sirens had finally stopped their wailing. The sound of the engines was almost as deafening and the building shook from the cumulative effect. “Private Monroe!” he yelled again. A disheveled private ran into the holding area, desperately attempting to place a loaded magazine into his M-16.
“I’m a little busy right now, Sergeant; what do you need?” he said without actually looking up from his rifle.
“What is going on?” The sergeant asked with more than a little angst.
“We’re under attack. It seems that the same group that tried to take us over a couple of days ago is back, and with reinforcements,” the private answered anxiously. Now the sergeant was nervous. It was one thing to be under attack; but it was an altogether different beast when you were completely defenseless.
“How many more, Private?” the sergeant asked with a morbid curiosity. He figured, at the best of times, the unit could hold off two to three hundred armed attackers. But the unit was down by more than a third of its personnel and the morale had fallen a lot further than that. Monroe didn’t answer; he was now fumbling with his utility belt, which kept finding its way to the floor.
“Private, put down the weapon and then buckle up your belt,” the sergeant said in as soothing a tone as possible to try to calm the man down. It worked to some degree, the sergeant noticed how badly the private’s hands were shaking though.
“Private, how many men are headed this way?” he asked again. The private looked up with fear in his eyes.
“About a thousand,” came the tortured reply.
“Damn!” the sergeant said as he slapped his forehead.
“Yeah, I agree,” the private said as he finally managed to get his belt squared away.
“Give me a weapon.”
The private swiveled his head to look straight at the sergeant, as if maybe he hadn’t heard him right. “Did you just say, give you a weapon?”
“Come on, Monroe, you know this unit isn’t capable of thwarting that size an enemy. I hate to tell you this, but we’re all dead and I would much rather be out fighting than shot like a fish in a barrel. Let me regain a measure of my honor! Let me help to defend this place.”
“Sergeant, I can sympathize with you but there is no way that I have the authority to let you out, especially with a weapon.” Shots began to ring out from all around. The impact of small arms fire against the building sounded like hail, lead-based hail. The private ducked instinctually, as glass and wood debris flew around the room. Thank God for brick, the private thought, or the end would already be there.
Return fire from the barracks was a welcome sound. The staccato of the M-16’s, although a lot closer, did not drown out the enemy fire.
“Oh, fudge this!” the private announced. The sergeant almost laughed out loud at that. Here they were in the middle of a death match and the worst profanity the private could manage was “fudge.”
The mood turned serious when an errant bullet struck the wall, not more than four inches from where the private’s head was. Monroe headed back to his desk on all fours and reached his hand into the top drawer, pulling out his Colt .45, before he scurried back to the sergeant’s cell.
“Here! Take it, Sergeant,” the private said, holding out the weapon. He wished the sergeant would hurry up so he could pull his exposed arm back.
“Monroe! Let me out of here! By the time I have an opportunity to use this thing, it’ll be too late.”
“Mother fracker!” the private yelled. Sergeant O’Bannon couldn’t help himself; he loudly snorted at the private’s second attempt at profanity. “I don’t see the humor, Sergeant,” Monroe said as he fumbled with his key ring. With the door unlocked, the sergeant bolted from the cell as if he’d been shot from a cannon.
“Where you going, Sergeant?”
“I’m letting Beth out. Throw me your keys,” he said with his hand outstretched.
“Oh crap, I’m dead now,” the private said as he handed over the keys.
“Don’t worry, Monroe, you won’t be al
one,” the sergeant added wryly.
“Oh, that makes me feel tons better,” the private yelled to the sergeant’s retreating back. The sergeant reached Beth’s cell and panicked; he couldn’t find her.
“What the hell?” And then movement. “Beth?”
“Grady, is that you?” she said as she uncurled her body from the shadows of her cell. “What is going on?” she cried as she ran to his arms. Glass exploded and Beth wrapped her arms around the sergeant, holding on for dear life. The sergeant pulled Beth off him and told her to get down, which she dutifully obeyed. The sergeant crawled over to a window to see what was happening on the outside. But what he saw completely disheartened him.
From his vantage point, it appeared that the insurgents had the place completely surrounded. They were well-armed and seemed to have some semblance of structure. They weren’t advancing yet, but that would only be a matter of time. The sergeant low-crawled his way back to Beth.
“Beth, I’m going to have you do a few things. They may not make much sense, but you’re going to have to trust me on this.” Beth looked up at him with her huge, sad eyes. The sergeant’s heart never felt more vulnerable than it did at that moment. If he had to, he could have withstood a hundred bullets to get her out safely. But that wasn’t going to happen, and although this plan was risky, it was all he had.
“Beth, you need to get your cot made up and get your tray out of there.” She looked at him as if he’d gone nuts. Now was not the time for good housekeeping skills, her eyes conveyed. “Beth, I know it sounds crazy, but nobody is getting out of here. You are going to have to hide.”
“Hide where? Here?” Beth asked as she shook her head. “I’d rather fight.”
“I know you would, but that’s not what I want from you. I want you to live. I want you to go find Mike and tell him how much you love him. And I want you to remember me, but don’t ever tell him about us. I know it meant much more to me than to you. I can’t help myself Beth, I’ve fallen in love with you. And I’m going to do everything that I possibly can to protect you.” Beth moved over to where he was and kissed him like she had never kissed anyone, Mike included. She didn’t want to let go, ever.