The End of the Beginning

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The End of the Beginning Page 10

by Mark H Culbertson


  We were face to face at this point. I could have reached out and kissed her, and I wanted to, but it was the wrong thing to do. Things were already more complicated than they needed to be there was no reason to complicate them even more. I finally reached out and put my arms around her. After a second of stiffness she melted and started crying on my shoulder. I eased her down to the converted seat and we lay there in each other's arms until I felt her start to relax. I whispered in her ear, "I love you more than any of those people topside, but I know what we have to do and I know that we're going to get it done regardless of who or what we have to face down to do it."

  With that I held her until we went to sleep. It was the first time that Mike had knowingly let anyone see a crack in her armor. I slept sounder than I had for months. When I awoke it was daylight outside and Mike was still asleep in my arms.

  I lay there for a little while just relishing the feel of Mike against me. I didn't ever want to move. She was held close and she knew what I felt and I knew what she felt. That wasn't going to make things any easier, but at least it was out in the open. I'm pretty sure Charlie knew what was going on and he may have clued in Russell, but it didn't matter, we were professionals and we both knew that all of those people in orbit were relying on us to get a job done and that's what we were going to do, regardless of the cost.

  I slowly disengaged myself and rose to look out the window of the cockpit. The first thing that I noticed is that there wasn't a fire. That was pretty unusual. By this time of the morning coffee and breakfast were normally in full swing.

  I didn't see anyone moving in camp and could make out several lumps that appeared to be people sleeping, but that wasn't right because most of them would have been up about an hour by now. I knew something was wrong and eased back over to wake Mike, but found that she was already awake and looking at me with alert eyes, that seemed to ask if something were wrong.

  I held a finger to my lips and just nodded my head. She got the idea immediately. We slowly got our shit together and proceeded to a weapons check. It took us about a minute to check loads on the M-16's, and the forty's. I insisted that we pick up the riot guns, after all we didn't really know what was going on out there.

  The feeling of wrongness didn't change after I cracked the hatch. In fact, it got worse. Nothing moved down below. I had the riot gun resting on my right arm, with the sling wrapped tight to give me some leverage, while I had the M-16 held loosely in my left. I was leaning backwards against the ladder, while I was walking down forwards. Just as I got to the third step, I felt Mike's foot in my shoulder pushing me forward, hard!

  I didn't hesitate, I went with it and hit the ground at a roll to the right hand side, bringing the M-16 and the riot gun in close in order to keep the barrels out of the ground. As I hit I saw something moving in on my left. It was one of those dogs, but this time there was a man coming in directly behind him. I let loose a burst with the 16 just as Mike let go with the riot gun. Then all hell broke loose.

  M 16 fire started coming from under the fuselage of the Nemesis and several arrows or crossbow bolts went flying through the air. I was concerned with the dog and the man behind him, but I think that the riot gun took care of most of that problem. Mike had let loose with four shots in a row and then had abandoned it for the 16.

  The only problem was that she was up there on that ladder without cover and that was something that I couldn't handle. Evidently, I wasn't the only one who couldn't handle it. Thomas came from nowhere with an old lever action deer rifle in his hands. He looked like Jeremiah Johnson, with his beard and that rifle in his hands and fire in his eyes. He had cranked off about six or seven rounds, all the while walking forward as he yelled up at Mike "you get your ass off of that ladder young lady, right now!"

  It was hilarious after the fact, but at the time, Mike did nothing but listen, she cleared six steps at once and starting backing up toward the fuselage firing in the same direction as Thomas. I rolled over on my right side and started laying down covering fire downrange. It was a second or so before I saw what they were firing at.

  It seems that the New Americans had fortified a small bus of some kind and were using it as cover. They had firing ports and plate steel over the outside. I knew it wasn't out there when I looked out the window before, so they must have moved it in the few seconds that I was flying through the air and hitting the ground.

  It was obvious that they were making a run at Nemesis. I kept firing but I knew that I was a sitting duck. There was no cover where I was laying. We were using C-mags, which meant that I had 100 rounds, less what I had already fired, before I had to switch magazines. But, with the exception of an angel coming down to intervene on my behalf, that was when I was going to die and I knew it. There was no way that I could get my magazine switched without getting nailed. I was pinned down, trying to make myself as small as possible, with bullets and crossbow bolts hitting all around me.

  I could already feel something warm on my leg and didn't know if I was hit and it was blood or if I had pissed my pants. It didn't matter. When the shit hits, even experienced guys piss themselves if they aren't expecting it. I just kept firing at that bus. I would see a barrel poke its way out of one of the firing ports and I would drop three or four rounds in that direction. At this rate I had minutes to live, everyone else was firing too, but I was sure that they had other things to deal with. Every time that I tried to move one of those son of a bitches would drop a couple of rounds my way. I couldn't even get turned around to make a good shot. I was lying on my back on the middle of the roadway where Nemesis had stopped and firing back towards my feet at that damn bus.

  I don't know how long this went on, but when I glanced down at the magazine, I knew that I was a goner. There were only about ten or so rounds left and the folks in that bus showed no letting up.

  I had already loosed the riot gun from my right hand and had been firing the M-16 left handed. I knew that I had ten rounds in the forty-caliber on my hip. I was trying to reach the forty and fire on the damn bus at the same time when I felt a burn in my left leg. I looked down and saw that my pants leg was coated with blood and that new blood was flowing freely from a crossbow bolt in my upper right thigh. At least I hadn't pissed myself.

  I freed up the forty and was in the process of firing toward the bus with it and the 16 when I saw movement coming from the left side of the bus. It was one of those kids, it could have been David or one of the other teenagers, flying towards the bus from the grass in the median of the highway, with something in his hand. I grabbed the 40 with my free hand and started popping shots wildly toward that bus as I held the trigger down on the 16. I knew that the only chance that I had of surviving was of that boy taking out that bus. As he got close he jumped and did a dunk into one of those firing ports that would have had any NBA coach scouting him for the next first round draft pick.

  His trip lasted only a second or so and I never got a chance to see what was in his hand, but based on the aftereffects I had to assume that it was a stick of dynamite or some sort of firebomb.

  The boy hit the ground and rolled into a ball. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that the bus went "Whump!" and seemed to lift a few inches off the ground and then settle back down. Some flames came through the firing ports. There was no really load explosion. Body parts did not fly through the air. But the gunfire stopped and people quit trying to kill me and that was an improvement over the rest of the day.

  People started moving around. I tried to get up and discovered that I couldn't. My legs wouldn't work. I soon found that my arms didn't work either. I saw Mike get up from under Nemesis and run towards me. I tried to reach for her as she knelt down next to me, but I couldn't, my arms wouldn't work. I tried to ask her if she was alright, but my voice wouldn’t work. The last thing I saw were the tears in her eyes.

  Chapter 11

  I dreamed.

  I dreamed of people talking around me.

  I dreamed that I was
dying and of not knowing if I was already dead.

  I dreamed of extreme pain and remember thinking that I had gone to hell.

  I dreamed of little children, of my mother and dreamed that I was a little child and I remember thinking that I had gone to heaven. I saw things start to go dark but didn’t remember it being light.

  I awoke.

  There was someone beside me. I wasn’t sure if I was in heaven or hell. Everything was white.

  I awoke.

  I could hear a clock ticking. There was someone beside my bed. I tried to ask if I was dead but I couldn’t make my mouth work.

  I awoke.

  Someone was sponging my forehead. I didn't know where I was and there was no one that I recognized. But the important thing was that I awoke. I knew that I wasn't in heaven or hell. I was in a bed softer than I had slept in for more than twenty years and I hurt like hell. I didn’t know how I got there or what had happened.

  I awoke.

  There was a lady sitting beside my bed. When she saw that I was awake her eyes got wide and she quickly grabbed a towel and pressed it to my lips. I realized that it was wet and my mouth was dry. She started telling me that everything was alright and that I should lie still and that everyone was worried about me. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. I really didn't know where I was or for that matter even who I was. I went back to sleep.

  When I awoke again, there was a lady sitting beside my bed. It could have been the same one, it could have been a different one. I didn't know. But this time she had warm broth in her hands. It was the most wonderful thing that I had ever had. She fed me the broth, while she was telling me that everything would be alright and that I should lie still and that everyone was worried about me. I went back to sleep.

  When I awoke again, the lady was still by my bed. There were other people too. Some looked familiar, some didn't. There was a tall blonde lady that looked like she’d been crying. That looked familiar. I had seen her before and I knew that I needed to tell her something. I tried to reach out to her, but the effort was too much. I went to sleep again.

  The next time that I woke up things seemed clearer. I noticed that it was dark in the room and that there were tubes coming from my arms. The lady was still by my bed. Not the blonde lady, but the same one who was with me the other times that I awoke. I realized that I was in a hospital. After several moments of lying without moving, things started to come back to me.

  I remembered.

  I remembered the firefight. I remembered why I was here. I remembered what had started this whole mess. Most of all I remembered how a piece of me seemed to be missing. I started looking around for Mike and began to panic just a little. The last thing I remembered about the firefight was a lot of bullets flying.

  I tried to talk and found that I couldn't do anything but make unrecognizable sounds. This made things worse and I began to get frustrated, pissed actually.

  The lady looked up and tried to tell me that everything was going to be alright and that people were worried about me. I tried to tell her to shut the fuck up, but my mouth and tongue wouldn't work. I called for Mike, but I don't think that it came out very clear. I'm not sure that the lady or anyone else could understand me.

  I do know that the lady got very upset and yelled something that I didn't catch. The next thing that I knew there were some people holding me down and I felt a jab in my hip only to look down and see someone pulling a hypodermic needle out of my leg. After that things got fuzzy and I fell back to sleep.

  When I woke up it was light in the room and Mike was sitting beside me. I tried to reach for her and tell her that I was happy to see her, but she just grabbed my hand and told me "Not talk, conserve strength."

  She started feeding me some warm broth and after a little while I fell asleep again.

  I woke up to Mike still sitting beside my bed. The first thing that I noticed was that she looked like hell. It took me several minutes to say her name, but when I did it was worth it. Her face lit up and she took on a whole new attitude. I could still see the worry in her eyes but I could tell that she was relieved to hear my voice.

  I tried to sit up and found that there were strong hands lifting me and propping pillows behind me. There was some major agony in that sitting up but I was determined to do it. I did notice that one set of the strong hands looked vaguely familiar and after a minute I realized that it was Thomas. He had a grim look on his face but tried to smile when he saw me looking at him.

  I found that I could talk if I spoke slowly. I asked if Nemesis was okay. Mike nodded, but didn't say anything. I asked where the rest of the crew was and Thomas said that they were finishing the repairs on Nemesis.

  And then I asked the question that they didn't want me to ask. I asked how long I had been out of it. Mike looked at Thomas and then back at me. She hesitated before saying, "nineteen days".

  I thought about that for a minute. Almost three weeks. I was still weak and could hardly raise my hand. I asked what was wrong with me and Thomas told me that I had lost a lot of blood, about seven pints, based on the doctor’s best estimates. I thought that I had heard him wrong. I asked again and Mike repeated his answer.

  I lay there for a minute and then looked up and asked if I had received a blood transfusion.

  Thomas, after a brief delay, said "We have no way of typing blood. Anything that we would have done could have possibly killed you."

  I started to laugh, quietly at first, then louder. At first everyone around me looked like they were getting ready to tranquilize me again. When I realized that they didn't know what I was laughing about. I explained, "I'm type AB, I can take blood from anyone."

  Like most military topside, I had quit wearing my dog tags within the first two weeks after the idiots had blown things up. They tended to get in the way in freefall and when we had launched the mission, I didn't think about putting them on.

  In short order Thomas had set up an assembly line. Everyone that was physically able, that was close, was donating a little blood to me. I could feel my body starting to respond with the additional oxygen hitting my bloodstream.

  The male body only holds about twelve pints, or six quarts, of blood. That means that I had lost over half of the blood in my body. Without a blood transfusion, assuming that I didn't die of the common cold or some other malady, I would have spent over six months in the bed just to regain my red blood count. No wonder everyone looked so grim.

  That was probably the closest that I had ever been to dying.

  Sure I had been shot at and actually even shot before. But according to Mike that crossbow bolt had hit the femoral artery. The only reason that I hadn't died is that Mike had slapped a tourniquet on my leg and the folks at the settlement had a decent doctor that could actually stop the bleeding and stitch the artery itself.

  I soon found out that they had a pretty good hospital, just without any of the equipment that we were used to. My doctor was educated at University of Iowa and did his internship at the University of Iowa Medical center. He had some of the best training in the world, they just didn't have any of the modern conveniences that we had topside. I counted forty seven stitches in my leg and was informed by my nurse that I had fourteen more internal that would either dissolve on their own or never be removed, along with at least a dozen holes in various parts of my body that had to be stitched.

  As for the New Americans who attacked us, it seems that the young man who dropped the firebomb through the window finished off the bus that attacked us, with the exception of a few loose ends. According to Thomas they had been very quiet since the attack. He thought that they had put a major effort into it. In all there were over thirty New Americans killed. The fact that he didn’t mention how many were wounded led me to believe that prisoners were dealt with quickly.

  Only two of the members of the settlement were killed, but there were almost forty wounded, including me. It made me shudder to think how close I came to making it three dead.

  They te
nded to me very well. Mike visited me twice a day, once each morning and then again in the evening she would sit with me. Thomas was in daily as well as Russell and Charlie. Various kids would come in and out and bring me news of what was going on with the shuttle. I found out from Robert that it was David who firebombed the bus and was probably responsible for me not dying out there on the pavement.

  It seems that I had become quite a celebrity. The women in the camp were arguing over who was going to cook for me and the children insisted on dropping in seven or eight times a day. I asked my doctor, Dr. Parashu Abbot, although he insisted that he was Parashu, not Dr., about this and he told me that I had become the miracle man.

  I didn’t really understand this and asked him to elaborate. He looked at me with and odd look in his eyes, but he said, “first of all none of these kids have ever seen an airplane that would actually fly, much less a shuttle. Secondly, you caught Robert while he was following your party. According to him you came from nowhere without a sound and with Robert that is very hard to do. Third you were wearing the Flag of the United States of America on your shoulder, something that these children thought was legend, not fact. Add all that to the fact that you were laying on the ground, in the open, in the middle of a pitched battle, without regard to yourself, firing enough rounds toward that bus that were accurate enough to allow David time to drop enough explosive in the window to end the battle. And let’s not forget the fact that any, and I do mean any, of the people in this settlement that would have come out of that battle in the shape that you were in would have been buried by now. That sir, is why you are known as the Miracle Man. These children have watched you do the impossible. They believe that you will do the impossible again. They believe that you are going to make that shuttle fly again and they believe that you will make the shuttle at the airport fly also. They believe that you are going to free them from the threat of the New American’s and make their parents lives easier. God help us if you are not able to do that, because without you we are already dead.”

 

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