by E. C. Marsh
“You mean to tell us they all got sick on duty?”
“Maybe they did, I don't know. Mess hall food ain't all that bad and they couldn't all be hung over at the same time. Oh, if you need to piss, do it now. It's a ways off and I ain't stoppin' until we get there.”
“Come on Sarge, what's going on?”
“I honestly don't know. The LT got a call from Colonel Stevens and went off to check on all the squads pulling perimeter guard. He radioed back for me to meet them at the south gate and when I got there he had me haul one half of the squad to the dispensary and he hauled the other half. They didn't seem all that sick to me. A couple were pretty sunburned and probably a little overheated, too. My guess is, they partied a little too much the night before and couldn't handle the heat. Must be pretty embarrassing for the LT to get called on the carpet in the middle of the night, and by the Big Boy himself.”
My mind was racing: That's how Marty got started. I thought of Tom and Allen. Sitting there in the middle of nowhere, the world suddenly seemed to close in on me and I could feel my heart beating faster. I was afraid, and I felt tears welling up within me. Yes, I was very scared at this moment and wanted nothing more than just to be out of there.
“Sam,” I whispered in near-panic. “Sam, I'm so scared, I've got to get out of here. I can't handle this anymore. I wanna go home.”
“I know,” he whispered back and put his arms around me. “I know you're scared, and so am I. But let's just sit here a while and wait. You heard them, these clowns will be gone pretty soon. They have no idea that we're here. So we're okay where we are. Eventually, they'll leave. Our guys on the river are still sleeping, and I think we've made it pretty close to the road. So, just sit back and try to relax. Close your eyes and snooze a little if you want to, while I keep watch.”
I leaned back against the broad base of an ancient cedar tree, laid my head on Sam's shoulder and closed my eyes.
Chapter 21
Monday morning
I must have slept a little. When I suddenly heard the rustling of dry leaves close by and slowly opened my eyes, I found myself curled up on the ground with my head on Sam’s thigh. Sam was snoring softly.
Some protector! It was not quite daylight yet, more of a golden dawn with a promise of what to come. Dew was settling around us. I looked around for the source of the sounds that had awakened me and watched a little gray squirrel move about, at times scratching the ground for some unseen delicacy. Birds were chattering everywhere and I could not detect even a hint of the oddities we had seen down by the water.
Next to me Sam was stretching and moaning.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“Me neither.”
Sam looked around.
“Which way were those taillights we saw last night?”
I pointed to my right, just up a little rise and just a couple of hundred yards away at the most.
“That was close.”
“Yup.”
We brushed the dirt off and shared the last of the candy. I would have preferred to brush my teeth, but......
Then we slowly and carefully walked up the incline. You could clearly see where a vehicle had gone up the hill and where it had parked. The tire marks were deep and there were chunks of grass missing. Obviously they had problems going uphill. On the top the ground was level again and we found candy wrappers, cigarette butts and assorted trash strewn about carelessly where the vehicle had parked.
“What a bunch of slobs.”
“Definitely no Boy Scouts. At least they are gone now.”
Directly ahead of us was a drop off and when we reached it, we were looking at the black top road.
“Yes!” I said with conviction, “Yes, Yes, Yes!”
Chapter 22
Dawn found Ken Messer and Dave Smith busy at their computer consoles, Jeff Craft was curled up on a little 2- seater couch at the far side of the lab.
Smith stretched and turned to Messer.
“Hey, I think I’ve got it.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll get some satellite pix next time JA44P passes, which will be in exactly 5.5 minutes. We’ll know if your calculations are correct and we can let Jonathon know.”
“JA44P ? Is that the designation for one of our satellites?”
“Well, no not exactly one of ours. Let’s just say I have a contact and my contact has a contact and we’ve had to call in a couple of favors, but we are getting those pictures. I’ve done all the configuring and lining things up here. We’re ready. “
“I still don’t understand.”
“Ken, my boy, we’ll get real time transmissions of everything this bird high up in the sky sees and it’s a lot. I learned that this little piece of modern technology is routinely used to monitor large unpopulated area for illegal crops. So it should be possible for us to locate any unusual appearing vegetation.”
More or less patiently they waited, finally Smith began to work the keyboard and they saw images appearing on the monitor in front of him.
“There. What’s that? That brown stuff in the middle of all the green. What have we got here?”
It took another hour of tedious work and they gathered around a huge table, covered with papers. Dave Smith slowly attached the papers to each other with little pieces of tape.
“OK,” he said. “Gather around and let me show you what we have. Over here, I have circled in red where our intended target area is. As you can see it’s lots of green, our cornfield is growing nicely. Here are some enlargements of the area. Pretty nice straight rows. But this corn is still a long way from being ready to be harvested.” He looked at them and they all nodded in agreement. Then he continued,
“But over here, about 8 miles to the west, is an area that is totally different. See,” he pulled a large print out of the pile. “This area is full of trees and brush and stuff. The trees are covered with brown foliage, the brush is huge and I really don’t know what some of the other stuff down there is. But this here looks like autumn foliage. This gentlemen, is the actual target area.”
“Where would that be on our map? Where is the base?”
“Is that a river?”
“The base is right here.” Again he pointed using a long ruler. “This is that little river we flew over. See, right here, the river is in the middle of the target zone.”
The moment he spoke those last words, he realized what he had just said. All three men stared at each other.
“Oh, my God!” said Ken Messer finally. “There were people in the target zone. The blonde in the pink bikini.”
His companions were quiet . He stared at them.
“Well, say something! What now?”
Dave Smith had been silent. He looked at his companions.
“Now we find these people. We need to find them and we need to find them fast. Lets face it, we have no idea what the IMPB does to human beings. We only tested plant life. If anything has happened to these people, SERPAC will be gone, finished, finito, kaputt. The lawsuits will never end, we’ll all be finished, lucky if we can sling hamburgers at the nearest greasy burger joint to earn a living.”
“Now wait a minute, just wait. How can you jump to such a conclusion? We just saw one person. Suddenly you’re making a quantum leap from one person to multiples. I just don’t see a reason to get so excited.”
Jeff Craft looked around the table for support, but didn’t find any. His companions just looked at him in disbelief.
“Do you seriously believe that one woman, in a hot pink bikini, will be sunbathing in the middle of nowhere completely alone? In this day and age? No, there were others close by.”
Ken Messer ran his hand through his hair. “I was afraid of this, guys, I was afraid of this.”
“Give it a rest, Ken.”
“We can’t go to Jonathon with one babe in a hot pink bikini. You all know that. We might as well prepare for what’s to come. Come on, let’s plot this one out and lets do it by the numbers
.” Craft sat down and motioned for them to follow suit.
“Ok, the way I see it, we have an AMAG mishap here. Not necessarily a system failure, but failure of the targeting module. I’m not even sure that its a programming issue. I really think it may be a hardware problem. But whatever it turns out to be, we have had the scheduled IMPB burst, but targeted at the wrong zone. And we have people right in the middle. We don’t know what an IMPB burst does to humans and so we don’t even know what to look for. Any suggestions?”
“We need to go to the area, see if we can find them, one of us at least needs to go. After we see them we’ll have a better idea.”
“We may have to bring them here, you know isolate them, observe them.”
“Oh, come on. We can’t just go snatch people off the river! They call that kidnapping you know! “
“I like the idea of getting them and observing them. We have just inadvertently stumbled onto some human guinea pigs. I could see that as a little surprise bonus.”
“You are sick.”
The shrill buzz of the phone interrupted them. Jeff Craft responded and after a meek
“Yes Sir” switched the speaker phone on.
“This is Jonathon Brooks. I had chosen the three of you to handle this project for SERPAC, because I felt you were the most capable, most responsible, most trustworthy! And then I get a call from my old friend Col. Stevens to let me know that he has eight very ill young men in the base hospital. Since nobody can figure out what is wrong with them he wants me to assure him that our AMAG did not malfunction and accidentally hit his men. What can you tell me?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Jeff Craft cleared his throat.
“We’ve had a problem. It appears, that for reasons unknown, AMAG targeted an area different than planned. The IMPB burst went off on time, but into the wrong target zone.”
“Holy shit! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sir, we just finished the analyses. I was just getting ready to call you when you rang through.”
“How far off is the target zone?”
“Sir, the target zone shifted by about eight miles. It now includes the southern tip of Camp Crowder, the river dividing the base from the civilian farms and of course some of the farm lands.”
“Well, shit! Then Stevens’ boys were right in the target zone. I want one of you to make contact with Stevens, go see those boys, try to tape everything. Seems we have some human subjects we hadn’t planned on. Might as well make the best out of this situation.”
“That’s not all, Sir. There also were civilians on the river.”
“What?”
“There were civilians on the river. When we did the baseline fly over right after the IMPB burst, we also flew over the actual target zone.” He blushed. “The pilot gave us the scenic tour. We saw at least one person on the river.”
“Was the tape still running?”
Craft looked at his companions. Ken Messer nodded, “Yes, I believe so.”
“Well, find out. Beliefs belong in church, we deal with facts. Make sure. Get the tape and transmit it to me pronto. I want to see what you saw. Civilians, Jesus, what else went wrong?”
“That’s all we know of, Sir.”
“Craft, find those damned civilians. Locate them, question them, detain them if you have to. I don’t care. Spend money, do whatever it takes to get control of this situation. Do not allow any of this to leak to the media. If we handle this right we can still salvage AMAG.”
“Sir, this is Ken Messer from Seattle. We have no experience with humans exposed to the IMPB. We never even factored human exposure into our calculations. Wouldn’t it be better to alert the public to this mishap so we can ....” He was rudely interrupted.
“Mr. Messer, I believe you are on my payroll and SERPAC doesn’t do public service announcements. I suggest you remember that when your conscience acts up next time. Now clean up this mess you’ve made and report to me that all is under control when you call me back.”
It clicked and the line went dead. The three men stared at each other.
“Ok, you heard the man” said Jeff Craft . “I’ll get ahold of this Col. Stevens and see if they can give me a pilot to cruise this godforsaken river until I find someone. Ken, get ahold of our corporate pilot, whatever his name was. I’ll find out from Stevens where those men are, then you go there. Observe everything, tape what you can without being too obvious, find out what’s going on. Okay?”
Ken nodded. Craft turned to Smith.
“Dave, rerun everything while we are out. From the first moment. We need to know what happened and why it happened. Plus you’ll be our communications center. Ken and I will check in with you. Send the rest of the techs home until further notice. Tell them we’re having lots of computer problems and to enjoy a couple of free days. Okay? Oh, and get the film of the fly-over to Jonathon,”
Chapter 23
Our spirits soared as we reached the black top highway, and we walked with renewed vigor at a faster pace. But not for long, soon my feet were burning, those cheap, light canvas shoes provided no support. I could feel blisters forming, but somehow I kept going.
“I hope you have at least a basic idea of where you are going?” I said, just for the sake of saying something .
“Well, I do. I’m trying to keep us going down river, because that’s where Tom is headed. Somewhere along the way I’m hoping to find a farm or maybe we’ll run into someone, anything.”
My feet were on fire now, every step like salt rubbing in an open wound and I knew that some of my blisters had burst. I wouldn’t allow myself to stop, I couldn’t. I thought of Tom and I thought of Marty and I thought of Allen. I missed him and Tom so much. Automatically I just set one foot in front of the other without thinking, left, right, left, right, Tom, Allen, Tom, Allen......
The sun burned merciless down on the tar. The heat and humidity combined with the noise of the cicadas hypnotized me. Somewhere along the way I had lost my hat and although we walked on the shady side of the road, I was sweating profusely and swatting at flies. I focused on Tom and Allen. Although I missed Allen, at this moment I missed Tom more. I could feel my heart racing whenever I thought of him. What would I do if something happened to him? I could not imagine my life without him. Funny, I never once thought that something could happen to me and how he would live without me. I thought of our early days, before we were married, before we had Allen. And suddenly I felt very old, sad and scared.
Tom has always been such a gentle, caring person. I used to think of him as my knight in shining armor, he was always there to rescue me from the fierce dragons. It didn’t matter what dragons I was up against, problems at work, problems with my parents, a speeding ticket, Tom was there for me.
Mostly he listened and let me talk, and he’d hug me, hold me and rub my back and everything would come right back into focus for me. What had seemed a crisis, suddenly no longer was of importance.
I wished for time to stop, for us to be able to go back to before this horrible trip and for us to choose not to go. At least for time to stop long enough for Tom to catch up and be with me. I knew I could handle anything and everything if Tom was with me. But he wasn’t and I was still walking along a hot blacktop country road out in the middle of nowhere, wishing for someone to come along, anyone, so we could get to our destination faster and put this nightmare behind us.
Being with Sam was better than being alone, but it wasn’t the same as being with Tom. Right foot, left foot, right foot left foot, I kept walking, one foot in front of the other. I no longer cared about the sweat pouring off me, plastering my hair to my head. You can do this, I told myself. Remember what Tom always says, you’re strong, you’re tough, you can do anything you make up your mind to do.
Sam, a few steps ahead of me looked dazed and just as sweaty. Right foot, left foot, right foot left foot. I noticed that my steps were in synch with Sam’s. Without noticing it, I had even matched the length of my strides to his. I chuck
led and tried deliberately to change the rhythm and the length of my steps, but it didn’t work and so I gave up.
Where would Tom be now? Did he get enough sleep last night? Did he miss me last night? Is he missing me now? What would I do if he too was killed on this trip? Would Allen and I be able to make it? Right there and then, on that hot country road I decided not to think that thought, ever again. We would be together, Tom and Allen and I. I would see to that. I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and felt a burst of energy.
What would Sam do now? How would he explain what happened to Marty to their kids? How would he go on? He had always seemed so devoted to Marty. Once he got home, everywhere he looked there would be reminders of her. I really felt sorry for him, poor man. We used to tease him mercilessly about his devotion to Marty. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.....