by Joshua Gayou
I returned to the landing and began to descend, so deep into my own head that I didn’t see him waiting for me at the bottom until I’d gone three steps down. As usual, my heart leaped into my throat.
“What’s the matter, Amanda?”
He looked small at the bottom of the stairs, enough of a distance away from me that it was hard to make out the flattened mass of his nose. His too long hair fell into his eyes, making him appear almost boyish, which was offset by the fact that both his shirts and pants would soon need to be replaced if he was going to insist on always trying to lift more weight with that barbell set.
“What the hell?” I shouted. “I was calling for you!”
He was up the stairs before I knew what was happening, the backs of his fingers pressed against my cheek and looking at me intently.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “You’re sweating. What’s happened, are you hurt?”
“I…I need you,” I said lamely. I corrected: “I need you outside right now.”
It took far less time than I would have thought to explain the situation once Jake was outside. Such an earth-shattering thing, so horrifying, summed up in a simple declaration.
“I guess he was doing more than teaching the kids,” Oscar said in a shaking voice. “He was messing with my girl. Touching on her. I’m gonna kill him if I can.”
Jeff cringed deeper into himself as Oscar spoke and whimpered, “It’s not true.”
“I see,” Jake said after a moment’s consideration. His face was unreadable, which told me everything I needed to know.
He crouched down in front of Jeff, placed two fingers against his chin, and lifted up the ruin of his face to get a clear look. There were several cuts bleeding freely and the left eye had swollen shut completely.
“Let’s get him in the small camper, please. Monica, would you go with him? Clean him up a bit?”
“Why?” she asked, surprising me.
“Because you’re strong enough that most men here can’t overpower you and you have experience in this sort of thing. I trust you to hold off judgement until we know for sure.”
That simple reminder of her past life working in the penitentiary, a job she still avoids talking about, seemed to snap her into action. She straightened up immediately, closing the distance to Jeff and pulling him up to his feet with her free hand, the other holding my Glock. “Well, come on,” she said quietly as she pulled him away.
“I need to speak with Maria, please,” said Jake. “Alone.”
27 – Keep Driving
Gibs
Three days later, we were driving north up the 15, having left Las Vegas behind in a cloud of dust and middle fingers; all of us as giddy as soccer moms at a bachelorette party drinking fruity cocktails and playing with a bunch of penis-themed party favors. Our trip had gone better than any of us could have reasonably hoped and it was a true exercise in personal restraint for me to keep from stapling the gas pedal to the floor. The truck bed was loaded down with enough food to carry us into the first thaw of next year and the trailer was packed with enough hardware to outfit everyone four times over. I suffered and intense, jittering compulsion to get it all home where it would be safe as fast as possible; however the fuel economy readout of the Ford suggested doing so was a really bad idea.
Through a bit of experimentation, we’d determined that the best we could do was about twelve miles to the gallon at around fifty-five miles per hour or so; we could do a little better at higher speeds if we were rolling downhill. When we tried to push faster, our fuel economy started to take a hit, which was bad because all of the fuel calculations we’d made back in the valley assumed a twelve mile per gallon ratio based on what we’d seen of the truck’s performance in day to day activities. If we fell very far below twelve, I didn’t know if we’d have enough fuel to get home and couldn’t calculate it because there wasn’t any kind of fancy meter on the reserve tank to tell us how much was left.
It took us forever to figure out what was happening. I couldn’t understand at all why the fuel economy was so shitty on our trip. It’s not like the guzzling Ford was standard equipment for the modern Eco-warrior or anything, but we could usually maintain twelve mpg back home well over the speeds we were forced to limit ourselves to on the trip out to Vegas. Wang eventually figured out the most likely cause; we were hauling a metric ass-ton of supplies behind us and the thirty-five square foot armored sheet that we’d hung off the back of the trailer was acting like a drag chute, forcing our engine to work harder the faster we went.
Once I understood what was going on, I nearly pulled over to the side of the road to ditch the damned thing, reasoning that the extra time we’d have to spend driving translated to elevated risk. I ultimately decided against doing so on the grounds that having a bulletproof ass was a good idea no matter how fat it made you. Additionally, I’ll admit I wasn’t interested in swallowing a ration of shit over having unloaded the thing after I’d devoted such time and energy to creating it in the first place.
So, I set the cruise control at fifty-five and concentrated on not squirming in the driver’s seat as the scenery rolled by at a painfully slow pace.
We’d been driving continuously for the past few days as planned, stopping only to pillage a site or relieve ourselves on the side of the road. Each of us had taken a turn at the wheel by this point but, as luck would have it, we were back in the original positions we’d occupied when we left the commune; with Wang in the passenger seat and Davidson and Greg in the back. There was one significant point of difference between the time we left and the time we were on our way home, though: each of us now had in his possession high end ballistic armor and helmets capable of stopping multiple high powered rifle rounds. No shit, Jake’s little find in Vegas had been a LEO supplier, and we’d walked through the rows of shelving in that warehouse like it was Christmas. There was much more in the trailer as well, if we could just get the damned things home before Christmas actually happened. There were quite a few other interesting things we’d found as well; things that I very much wanted to get home and get comfortable with.
Thus it was that I was in a fairly happy mood, despite our grandfatherly progress up the road, when Wang asked me to pull over to the side of the road so he could recycle a little water. I did so and he cracked his door to get out; it was nearly yanked from his hand by a nasty gust blowing east across the desert.
“Crap, man, how the hell am I gonna go in this?” Wang complained. “It’ll get everywhere. Shit, I don’t know if I can hold out until we pass a building or something.”
“Just don’t walk away from the truck,” I said. “Stand right here and just piss into the dirt between the truck frame and the bottom of the door. The door itself should block you from the worst of the wind.”
Wang looked at me dubiously and said, “That’s a little less privacy than I’d like…”
I snorted laughter and asked, “What, are you afraid I’m gonna see your pecker? Don’t worry. None of us are Peter-gazers. Well, Davidson might be.”
“Fuck off, Gibs,” Davidson laughed from the back seat.
When he didn’t move I sighed and turned to look out the other window. “Hurry up, Wang. Just get it done and let’s get going.”
Now, you’re probably going to say I’m an asshole for what happens next, but I don’t care. It was worth it. Also, that’s affirmed: I’m a proud asshole.
I waited to hear Wang’s pants unzip, held my breath, and waited a few more seconds before I heard the telltale patter of drops hitting dirt (which wasn’t easy due to the sound of the gusting wind, by the way). It didn’t take much. I just pulled my foot off the brake and the idling engine did the rest, causing the truck to roll forward a few feet, exposing Wang to the wind and all the havoc it could cause.
“Son of a…ASSHOLE, Gibs! You’re a giant asshole, man!”
I tried to answer him but the sound of combined laughter coming from the inside of the truck cab made it difficult. In the meantime,
Wang was shuffle-stepping along to get back into the protective shelter of the door.
Through gasps of laughter, I managed to say, “I’m…oh, Jesus, I’m sorry man, I just couldn’t help it. Is it really bad?”
“Uh, yeah! I got piss all over my hands and sprinkled the shit out of my jeans, you di-STOP ROLLING, you colossal bastard! What the fuck!”
I was doubled up and laughing so hard that my foot had slipped off the brake pedal. I stomped it back down and threw the truck into park until I could get control of myself.
“I’m sorry, man,” I gasped. “That wasn’t on purpose. Or, the first time it was but the second one was my fuck-up all the way.”
“Well, it’s not like it matters,” Wang said angrily. “I’m done now, anyway.”
Greg and Davidson were still bawling uncontrollably in the back seat, groaning and laughing by turns; wheezing and complaining about their sore ribs.
“Yeah, you all keep laughing back there, too,” Wang called back at them. “Next time I drive you’re all screwed.”
“Hey, come on, I’m sorry. Here…” I threw a package of wet wipes at him. “Clean yourself off, put your wang away, and let’s get rolling.”
“And he follows it up with a dig at the name,” Wang said to no one in particular as he climbed back up into the cab. “There’s that twelve year old sense of humor we all know and love.”
“Hey,” I said. “I take exception to that. I’m operating at least at a fourteen year old’s capacity.”
“And the intelligence to match, obviously.”
“Damned touchy little pissant, ain’tcha?” I said. “If you’re feeling cranky over missing your nap time, I can certainly give you something to suck on.”
“You kiss your sister with that mouth?” he grumbled.
“Never had a sister,” I said. “Had to make do with smearing peanut butter on my balls and chasing the cat around.”
“Wait, cats eat peanut butter?” Davidson asked from the back seat in clear disbelief.
The truck cab erupted into another bout of panicked laughter even louder than before as three of us attempted, and failed, to come to grips with Davidson’s thought process.
“What? What the Hell? I didn’t think they’d eat peanut butter!”
“Stop, dude! Just…stop!” Greg grunted through stuttering coughs.
Eventually, it all died down to a dull roar, with a few random coughs and sniffles breaking up the new silence. My cheeks hurt from so much smiling; the last time I could remember going through something like that was…
“I haven’t laughed that hard since Blucifer,” Wang chuckled quietly.
I grunted and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, man. It was fucking dumb. Are we cool?”
He shot me an amused look, “What, back there? I’m over that, man. Mostly I was just having fun winding you up.”
I was too exhausted to laugh anymore. The sound that escaped my mouth was more of a “Hunf”. “Wiseass,” I said.
We drove on for a few minutes in silence before a dusty, old memory surfaced in my mind; a rusted, unused thing that I hadn’t thought of in years.
“You know, I knew a guy who got it a lot worse than you,” I said to Wang. “This was years and years ago-“
“You’ve been doing this shit to people for years and years?” Wang asked.
“No, damn it, just listen to me. This was years ago when I was still in the Corps; I’d just made E5, in fact. My Staff Sergeant and a few of us Sergeants had to hitch a ride on a Phrog (that’s a CH-46 helicopter) to get from A to B…don’t even ask me where. I can’t remember where we were going anymore, they shipped us around so damned much.
Anyway, it so happened that a Flight Surgeon had to tag along with us to log his required hours-”
“Flight Surgeon?” asked Wang. “You mean like a doctor that has to hang around on an aircraft? Are they fixing up guys who get shot on the helicopter mid-flight or something?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said. “They were basically just doctors who’d been trained to serve as physicians to our pilots and flight crew. Military pilots have to meet higher health and physical standards than your average grunt, so you need a doctor trained to watch out for that kind of thing. Also, different types of flying will affect your physiology differently, so Flight Surgeons have to be familiar with those effects and be able to treat them as well.”
“Uh, okay, but you said he had to get some required hours. I’m assuming that’s flight time? Why do they have to fly if they’re just doctors working in some office or something?”
I nodded and said, “Part tradition, part morale, really. They have to serve a certain amount of time as flight crew because they need to be cognizant of what a flight crew goes through. Additionally, the thinking was that it was good for them to work alongside the guys they had to treat just to build up some level of comradery.”
“Well, that sounds pretty smart,” Davidson said from the back.
“Or so you’d hope,” I said. “The one that came along with us was a complete tool. Nobody liked this guy, apparently. I’d never met him before that point but the flight crew sure knew him.”
“What was his deal?” Wang asked, becoming engrossed in the story.
“From what I saw that day, I’d say he was probably an arrogant prick with an undeservedly high opinion of himself. So anyway, there we all were, airborne, and this flight doc leans over to the Crew Chief and says something. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, you understand; as part of the flight crew, they were all hooked into ICS – basically the on-board radio. I had to get filled in later by the Crew Chief…what the fuck was his name again? Brandt, that’s right! Sergeant Brandt. We all laughed our asses off when he explained what happened.”
With a smile creeping slowly across his face, Wang asked, “Well, what did happen?”
“Turns out the flight doc had to take a leak pretty bad and he was worried about his ability to make it all the way to landing. I suppose it was the first time he’d encountered such a thing. Guy figures he can’t be the only one this has ever happened to, so he asks the Crew Chief, ‘Hey, what do I do?’ you know? Those Phrogs didn’t come equipped with bathrooms.”
“Shit, that’s right,” Davidson said, mildly surprised. “What would you do?”
“So, I’m not sure if you guys know what a CH-46 looks like, but it’s a dual rotor craft, one up front and one in the rear, right?”
“Oh, you mean like a Chinook?” Davidson asked.
“Exactly,” I said, raising a thumbs-up to him. “A Chinook is really just the larger version; that was the CH-47, see? But among the many things the 46 and 47 had in common was a large loading ramp that dropped out its ass. The whole rear of the thing just opened up wide so you could load whatever you wanted or so you could jump out and get moving really quick; that kind of thing.
“So, Sergeant Brandt the Crew Chief says to the guy, ‘Look, it’s not a big deal. Just go piss on the ramp. We do it all the time.’ The Flight Surgeon looks back and forth between the rear of the plane and the Crew Chief a few times, shrugs, and thinks to himself, ‘Eh, fuck it. Could be worse.’
“My buddies, Brandt, and I then watched as this guy unhooks his helmet from ICS, straps into a lanyard, strides to the rear, opens up the goddamned ramp, and proceeds…to piss…to piss off the edge.” I had begun laughing at the end, unable to contain myself as the memory played back in my mind.
“I don’t get it,” Wang said. “What’s the deal?”
After my laughter calmed down a bit, I said, “Remember what happened to you just now when you got exposed to a little wind?”
“Yeah?”
“We were in flight, man. The wind that came back and hit him while he stood on that ramp was ten times worse than what you just caught.”
“Oo-oh no,” Greg laughed from the rear seat.
“This guy covered himself in his own piss!” I said, bawling laughter again. “He turned around to face us and his fucking vi
sor was completely misted like a car windshield in a rain storm!”
“That’s rather unfortunate,” Wang laughed. “None of you guys tried to warn him?”
“That’s the thing; the Crew Chief absolutely did try but the Doc had disconnected his radio to walk aft of the plane; the cable wouldn’t stretch that far. So Brandt’s back there waving his arms and calling out to him the minute the ramp starts to go down but the guy can’t hear. The wind hit almost immediately, so I think Brandt figured the guy would realize how badly it would go if he persisted. Evidently, he didn’t.”
“But the guy…uh, Brandt, told him to do that,” Wang said. “I’m confused; wouldn’t he have known-“
“No, he didn’t tell him that at all,” I interrupted. “He didn’t say to piss off the ramp. What the Flight Surgeon was supposed to do was piss on the ramp while it was still closed and then open it up after he was finished to clean it off. Christ, they even kept a water bucket in the back for that very reason.”
“Oh, God,” said Davidson. “Man, that really sucks.”
“So now this guy is fucking enraged and screaming back at Brandt. None of us needed a radio at that point; we could all hear what he was screaming. He was wiping his dripping face off after he’d closed the ramp back up and was just going on about it. ‘You planned that, I’m going to talk to your CO and have you NJP’d until your fucking head caves in, blah, blah, blah’.”
“NJP?” asked Wang.
“Non-judicial punishment,” I explained. “The younger guys called it a Ninja Punch. It’s basically what they do to you if you’ve fucked up but the fuck-up wasn’t bad enough for a court-martial. They can suck a little or a lot. Usually a lot.”
“So what did this guy Brandt say?” Greg asked.
“This was the best part,” I laughed. “Now, you have to picture this: Sergeant Brandt was a little fucker. Like, he was all of five-foot-seven or so. And on top of that, the Flight Surgeon was an officer; that outranks a Sergeant, see? Regardless of that, if he thought you were an asshole or that you’d done something stupid…and if you’d managed to piss him off enough, Sergeant Brandt absolutely would lay into you, and no threat of punishment or personal injury could stop him. While still laughing, he points right at the guy’s dripping face and screams, ‘You stupid motherfucker! I told you to piss on the ramp not off it! How the fuck are you even a doctor? How is it even possible that you didn’t realize what would happen if you pissed into that kind of wind? Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking dumb if you fell into a barrel of tits, you’d still come out sucking your thumb!”