by Tom Kratman
They had the beer. They had won. But then, go figure, they were all too afraid at first to open them. Maria’s sat on her chest, unopened, while she lay in bed.
“Fuck ’em,” someone finally called out. “They can only kill us; they can’t eat us.”
Marta bellowed, “Too tough! Besides, they wouldn’t like it if they could.”
Some other girl yelled out, “Hell, they wouldn’t know what they were doing if they did!”
From Eighth Platoon, across the maniple street: “None of them do, gay or straight!”
Then someone else, yelled, “In Caaay-dennnnce…Pop!”
There was a barrage of beer tabs being pulled, escaping gas, and giggles. (Well…men giggle, too, sometimes.) It seemed like hundreds of pops; though there were only about two score left between both platoons by then. Maria popped hers with the rest; then laughed for many, many minutes. The beer was too warm, but more delicious than any she could ever remember, then or after.
* * *
A pleasant woozy feeling engulfed Maria; half beer, half victory. She saw something, something she would never be quite sure of. Still, she thought she saw a shadow on the window by her bunk, a shadow that looked a lot like Centurion Garcia. The shadow seemed…somehow…to be smiling.
Inez had told them, “It wouldn’t be right for us to hide what we’ve done. It would be…cowardly. So every one of us is going to leave her empty can at the foot of her bunk, precisely centered. Zamora, you stand at one end and line them up by sight, just like it was a parade field. Then we’ll take whatever unopened cans are left and place them in a neat pyramid just outside Garcia’s office, a gift to our trainers.”
It was an article of faith to the women that Garcia never really smiled. And, indeed, they’d never seen him really smile with mirth, not once. But he came in the next morning, took one look at the empties, another at the pile outside his door, then went into his office. But even with the door locked, and despite what sounded like his best efforts to strangle himself, they could still hear him laughing ’til he nearly cried.
When he finally emerged, stone-faced as usual, he held a lock and key in his hand. Swinging the lock around his index finger, he announced, to no one in particular, “I happened to notice, as I came in this morning, that the vending machine over by headquarters needs a new lock. Take care of it…and…tidy up the barracks, filthy girls. Meanwhile, I have a small wager to collect from Centurion del Valle.” He dropped the lock and key to the floor, bent to pick up two cans, then left, whistling some martial tune.
Maria thought then, as she was to think later, damned shame he’s not straight; he’d probably make a fine father.
But Garcia was to die, too, and all the children he ever had were the Amazons, that first crew and the sisters who followed. But then, they were pretty good kids, who followed in their old man’s footsteps.
* * *
Graduation exercise…“the wringer.”
Oh, that wasn’t the official name. No one ever called it by its official name. To one and all, male and female, it was simply, “the wringer.”
It began about one on a rainy morning. The Amazons stood in the rain, covered only by their wide-brimmed jungle hats, helmets slung by their straps on their canteens. Ponchos were really superfluous: they could be wet from the rain, or they could be wet from sweat and then stink besides. Just plain wet was better. But the training schedule had said: “Uniform: Field with ponchos.” So thus it had to be.
Garcia, similarly clad, called the roll. It was a ceremonial thing. He called, “Fuentes, Maria?” She answered, as she had to in order to take the test, “Private Fuentes; willing and able, Centurion.”
No test, no graduation. No graduation and she could either resign or do the whole damned last month and a half over again. Worse, she would have to do it with some girls she didn’t even know.
On their backs the women carried a scaled down load: full water and ammunition, but only minimum essential equipment and only one ration apiece. “Food would be provided,” they’d been told. They had also heard through the rumor mill that “food would be provided” really meant that some food would be provided…intermittently…maybe…if they did well.
The first part of the test was a march, thirty miles in twelve hours, combined road and cross country. No big deal, really, especially with a reduced load. They could all do that, they figured, if not quite standing on their heads.
A training unit’s own cadre wasn’t allowed to lead them on the march. It was a test of how well the cadre’d done as much as it was of how good the recruits were. Instead of the usual cadre, the School of Infantry on the Island had a testing board. They would set the pace, noting any who fell out.
Before turning the platoon over to those SOI men to lead the march, Garcia told the platoon to, “Stand at ease.” Then he said, simply, “Good luck, troops.” He hadn’t ever called them “troops” before, never before called them anything but in a tone of voice that meant “twat”—and that unusually pejoratively. Perhaps it meant something to him when he finally did. It surely meant something to the girls.
Garcia then called them to attention, did a smart about face, reported to the testers, “Seventh Platoon, Training Maniple, Tercio Amazona, ‘willing and able.’ ” Then he’d marched off to the side.
The tester—his stick said he was a senior centurion though under the poncho no one could see his name tag—showed them a map of their route. It wound through the Island then stopped near the ocean on the east side. When they’d had a chance to see their route, the tester ordered them to, “Right…Face,” then, “Forward…March.”
The first few miles weren’t bad. Maria noticed, though, that her socks were wet with the falling rain. No problem for the first few miles, but, when the testers inevitably picked up the pace, she began to blister. Within the first ten miles, her feet were just areas of bleeding, oozing pain. Every new step was an agony.
She had a chance to change her socks midway through. She had to peel them off carefully because almost all the skin and callus of her feet had been torn off. Dried or tacky blood stuck the socks to the open flesh. Each little toe was deeply abraded. It made her a little sick. It was one thing to see someone else bleed; she’d gotten used to that. But to see the damage to her own body? Yech!
She wasn’t the worst off among them, either.
It was a horror to pull new socks on over the wounded flesh. The foot powder she put on in a vain effort to control the damage burned. There was neither time, nor materials, for more than that. She screamed out loud in pulling her boots back on. Struggling back to her feet was pure hell, every muscle in her legs screaming in protest.
The next fifteen miles represented roughly thirty thousand individual steps for each of them. Each individual step meant effective vivisection of uncountable raw nerves as the material of the socks (even the dry socks they’d put on were soon soaked with blood and crud) and the boots rubbed against their poor tortured feet. Then the long drawn out flash of burning pain as they set one foot down was followed by pain of a slightly different quality as they lifted the trailing foot for the next step. Like crucifixion, hard marching varies its agonies so one can never quite grow used to them.
Unlike their own cadre, the men leading the march did apparently feel sympathy for them, did see them as real women, real people. They couldn’t slow the pace; a standard had been set they were under compulsion to have the Amazons meet. Nor were they allowed to help the females carry anything; that would have been a violation of training regulations so gross as to call for a court-martial. Instead, they—some of them—suggested the girls give it up, fall out and fail. “It’s better than what you’re going through,” they said. There was a truck trailing the column to carry those who couldn’t make it.
Couldn’t make it? The Amazonas? Oh, no. They could and would, bleeding or not. Just as they’d called encouragement to each other, they heaped scorn on those men who suggested they drop out.
They
were proud of each other that none of them took the testers up on that truck. They all knew pain by then, some them knew the pain of a long and difficult labor. All pain ends, in time.
Inez whispered, “But pride…pride lasts forever.”
In time, the road march portion of the test ended. For so long as she lived each woman would always recall the joyful cries of the leading ranks as they shouted, “The sea! The sea!”
It took rather longer for the pain to go away.
* * *
There was food, water (blessedly cool) and medical care waiting for them as the march ended. The medics did what they could to bandage the damaged feet. But, when the entire foot is wounded, bandages can’t help much. Still, the antibiotics they layered on were probably an aid in the longer term. Infection in tropical Balboa could be dangerous.
The women slept well, more or less dead to the world, before beginning the next phase. That wasn’t so bad; a lot of tests of individual skills and small unit tactics. They did as well as an equivalent group of men, perhaps a bit better. This phase took three days, time for their feet to partially heal. Then came the next-to-last phase, the “sickener.” The “sickener” was weighed very heavily in selection of leaders but failure to complete it wouldn’t cause failure in the course. It was almost optional.
That, too, was a march, only across country. The Amazons went by hovercraft to the real jungle, a godforsaken place near the western border, in the La Palma jungle. The trip across the bay was really wonderful, very fine. Everyone was in great spirits, singing and laughing. Why not? It was almost over. And they had graduated.
They didn’t know how long this “sickener” was to be, or how fast they had to go. Still, they thought, it couldn’t be as bad as what we’d just been through, even with our feet still in ruins.
* * *
They’d have thought right, too, except for one little thing or, rather, one class of little things. Those sat on the ground in front of each Amazon. They were steel, four pointed, and big enough that they couldn’t be fit into a rucksack.
Each weighed about thirty pounds. It had sharp edges, designed to dig into the shoulders. It was also uneven, cleverly designed so that there was absolutely no way to carry it in a reasonably comfortable and balanced position. Just to add insult to injury, the son of a bitch had loose pieces of steel inside to rattle around and make a most annoying racket. Its official name was “Nausea Inducer, Steel, Four-point, Projecting, Class B (female).”
They each had their own, to carry and to name. Trujillo called hers a “bitch.”
They picked up the “nausea inducers” and moved to the start points. Each of the women had a map and a compass. They also had a point in the jungle, two to three miles away, to which they had to navigate. No two girls both began at, and had to find, the same points. There wasn’t any company on this one, no one to help them in mind or body. Each girl was on her own, for most of them in a way they hadn’t been in their lives.
“You ready to go, chica?” the sergeant asked Inez when she reported to her start point.
“ ‘Private Trujillo, Inez, willing and able,’ Sergeant.” she echoed.
“Very good, Private Trujillo. From this point you will navigate on your own, without assistance or encouragement, carrying one ‘nausea inducer,’ to a point on your map as marked. There, you will be given a new map with a new point to navigate to. I can’t tell you how many points there are to your course, so don’t ask. I can’t tell you how far the course is, so don’t ask. I can’t tell you how fast you have to go, so don’t ask. Any questions?” He smiled, not precisely evilly.
“No, Sergeant. That pretty much covers everything.”
“Yes, it does. Private Trujillo, I mark the time as 06:48 hours. Good luck. Go.”
Between the condition of her feet and that horrid chunk of steel on her shoulders, she couldn’t run. She moved out as quickly as she could while still keeping her balance. The “bitch” ensured that she would not always be able to keep her balance.
It wasn’t all that hard finding the first point. She fell a few times; her “bitch” cut into her shoulders continuously. Still, it wasn’t too hard.
At the first point, another sergeant checked Inez’s name off of a roster, then handed her another map, taking back the old one. “A bit slow, Private Trujillo. I don’t think you’re going to make it.”
Inez didn’t bother to answer. Throwing her bitch back on her shoulders, she half-trotted even farther into the jungle before slowing down to a more practical speed.
Even before reaching the third point—of who knew how many?—her bitch had actually succeeded in taking her mind partly off the puffed up bloody terror of her feet. The way it cut into her shoulder, wore down her arms, dug into her back or chest when she lost control of it (which was happening with increasing frequency)—above all, the goddamned rattling of steel on steel right into her ear—she began to really feel sick to her stomach with frustration.
Nausea Inducer? Oh, yeah.
At the third point the grader, this one was a corporal, said to her, in a voice dripping with concern, “Girl, you look like you’ve had about enough. Why don’t you knock off and take a break? There’s some coffee here, food. You can rest your feet and back for a bit and think about whether it’s worth keeping this shit up.”
Inez answered, “With all due respect, Corporal, please give me the next map and please, please…Fuck Off!”
She didn’t know it at the time—wasn’t thinking all that clearly, anyway, actually—but troops were allowed a certain latitude of expression on a “sickener.”
The corporal laughed, not unkindly. “Here you go, chica. But it won’t get any better.”
She looked at the map. It showed her she could follow the very ridge she was on for two and a half kilometers, then descend two hundred and fifty meters to a creek. From the creek she could go a very short distance north to a small bridge. From the bridge she could shoot an azimuth—take a direction with the compass—and walk, maybe run, less than four hundred meters to the next point. She re-shouldered her bitch and took off.
* * *
“Oh, the dirty, dirty bastards,” Inez muttered.
The ridge was fine. The creek had been there. She had, in fact, followed it for a while, frankly not paying enough attention. There was no bridge. They’d given her a doctored map. She didn’t know anymore exactly where she was. She’d been counting on that bridge.
Trujillo suddenly felt sick, sick, so very sick. I am going to lose time. I might fail. I don’t even have to be doing this. She sat by the side of the creek and wept for a while.
Great things, tears. A man might not have wept. He also might have given up right then; no outlet for frustration. Inez didn’t give up. She dried her face of tears and sweat, picked up that horrid chunk of steel, and walked as quickly as she could back to the last place she’d really known where she was, a spot beside the creek at the base of the ridge. Then she inflated her rubber air mattress and paddled herself and her “bitch” to the other side of the river.
As Inez was sitting her tiny frame on the air mattress to deflate it she had a borderline brilliant thought. She got off of the air mattress immediately and blew a little more air into it. Then she took some cord and tied the mattress so it cushioned the bitch.
Oh, it was hot and sticky after a while. But it dulled the sharp edges and—blessed relief!—dulled the damned noise. She took another compass bearing and began a fast walk uphill to the fourth point.
At the fourth point two sisters from different platoons sat with hanging heads and downtrodden expressions. The sergeant there offered them some cool water. They refused.
“Why don’t you join them, Private…Trujillo?” he asked. “They’ve done the smart thing. You look like a smart girl. You should join them, give up on this shit.”
The girls wouldn’t meet Inez’s eyes.
She didn’t trust herself to say much of anything to the sergeant beyond, “Map, please, Serg
eant.”
The next two points, numbers five and six, were uneventful. She took the piece of map that led to point seven and looked at it. There is no way I am going to reach it—even near it—before sundown. She didn’t mind sleeping in the jungle, except for the snakes, and the unthinkably nasty antaniae, but she’d never been out there completely on her own before. She was pretty sure she didn’t like the idea.
The corporal at the point tossed her a single ration before she departed. As he did so he said to her, “You’re doing okay. Don’t listen to the ones who tell you different. And don’t tell anyone I told you.”
“Thank you, Corporal,” she said, and meant it. “I won’t.”
She made it about halfway to point seven before night fell, pushing on to use every last bit of daylight available.
Inez didn’t bother putting up a poncho to sleep under. She put up the net against the mosquitoes and the moonbats. She also had a can of bug spray and doused herself liberally with that, then rolled up in her poncho to go to sleep.
Snakes and moonbats notwithstanding, the jungle is really not an especially dangerous place. But it can sound that way. Between the howling monkeys, the occasional splash in any nearby body of water, the cries of all manner of wildlife, a person can lie awake all night with worry. And, while the septic-mouthed antaniae gathered, with their cries of mnnbt-mnnbt-mnnbt, they rarely attacked anything that wasn’t terribly young and weak.
As Inez was starting to drift off she felt a certain warmth at the corporal’s few kind words of encouragement.
Then she sat up with a start. She knew.
The son of a bitch had just said those things to lull me into complacency. I’m not doing “Okay.” No one in my shape could be doing all that well.
She was up in a flash, stowing what little bit of her gear she’d broken out. Her compass she set by the filtered glow of her flashlight. Then she shouldered the whole stinking load and began to weave her way as close to point seven as she could, given the fact that she tripped about every third step.