The Terminals

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  One dart had indeed pierced each of the monkey’s eyes. Incredible, Cam thought. Wally’s unnatural focus and steady hand had delivered the needle-tipped ordnance with absurd accuracy, and the two doses killed the monkey almost instantly. Maybe even just one, for a small animal. It seized and spasmed and then stiffened, its little lips curling back in a toothy grimace.

  “You jerk,” Calliope said.

  “That was a needless death,” Ward agreed. “We only kill one if it saves others. This is a waste. Inefficient and cruel.”

  “Not if we eat it,” Wally said.

  “Yeah, if you’re fond of paralysis, genius,” Ari said. “Eat that, and you ingest what you injected.”

  “Give me your weapon, Wally,” Donnie said. “You’re a loose cannon.”

  “Piss off,” Wally said. “You don’t own me.”

  “I’m scuba leader,” Donnie said.

  “I’m not scuba,” Wally pointed out. “I’m aerial. I’m on my own.”

  Ward watched the exchange, but didn’t intervene.

  Ari put his hands up in a “calm down” gesture. “Wally, I’m just gonna ask you to please not randomly kill any more cute or cuddly wildlife. Okay?”

  The entire group fell silent. Ari was team leader, and the sudden quiet moment between him and Wally was a test of their system, Cam thought, an example of authority problems that could arise during the real action. If there was to be order, Wally would have to relent. Otherwise, the chain of command would be weakened before the mission even began.

  Wally frowned and then handed Ari his pistol. “Okay,” he said. Then he grinned. “What else we got for lunch besides monkey?”

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  12. BOY FEVER

  by Wind Chimes and Grace

  13. SEXT ME

  by Jackie Z

  14. MEET AND GREET

  by Melody Who-Who

  “You make me feel hot, weak,

  and a bit like throwing up,

  in a good way, in a good way, in a good way.

  Yup!”

  Three more days of heavy training followed, each more specific than the last. Ward and Pilot became constant dart targets, and the team’s jungle survival runs improved steadily. In the final run, six of them survived, with Donnie selflessly lying in wait to tackle Pilot and take his paintball gun. He was then quickly killed by Ward, but the delay allowed the rest of the party to escape. More briefings were held with satellite views of the pirate compound and careful analyses of the likely interior layout of the buildings. The final day was a day of relative rest entirely devoted to live scenarios with no runs or swimming. Instead, they were bound, blindfolded, and dragged from place to place in the bunker and condos, while the scuba team moved in to free them.

  “The one constant is variability,” Ward quipped at them.

  Zara pierced Calliope’s tongue with a hot nail to help fit it with a tongue stud transmitter, through which she could report her position and give directions to the team. Cam was amazed that she could talk with her mouth closed and that Wally and the entire scuba team could understand her.

  Cam fell into a supporting role, but due to his proficiency throwing darts he was selected to have extra needles and flights sewn into his clothing. He was also given a beaten strap-on water bottle full of poison in the hope they wouldn’t think it important enough to take from him.

  “Don’t accidentally drink it,” Ward warned him quite seriously. An athlete’s habit of sucking on water bottles almost without thinking would be deadly for the next forty-eight hours.

  And, suddenly, the training was done.

  * * *

  The doctor visit was off-campus. Pilot flew them to the facility blindfolded, where they crunched down a gravel path. Once inside, they were unmasked and waited together in a windowless room with Ping-Pong and pool tables and all the soda they could drink. Ari called it “the gli club,” named after the malignant glioblastomas they all carried in their heads.

  Cam was good at both table games. He’d had a pool table with a removable Ping-Pong top in his house growing up, and Western Washington University supplied several of each in its dormitory common area. In fact, he’d been dorm champ sophomore year. Yet he struggled to keep up with Zara and Owen in Ping-Pong. They returned his slams with razor-sharp reflexes. And Donnie beat him outright. Ari then schooled him in pool, playing the angles with concentration and precision the likes of which Cam had never seen.

  A doctor met with them individually in a room full of equipment. Shelves with bottles and beakers lined the walls. It looked less like a doctor’s office than a laboratory. Cam’s doc was older, maybe fifty, and wore khakis with boots. Her hair was pulled back so tight it stretched her face into a taut mask. She and a male doc had come into the game room and pointed at them one by one, not using their names. Tegan first. Each took over an hour. Cam and Jules were last.

  When it was his turn, she marched him down a short hallway into another room. Before Cam could even say hello, she shoved a pencil and some forms at him. The forms didn’t have his name at the top. Instead, there was a number and letter—9K. Anonymity, Cam thought.

  He spent the first ten minutes filling out a survey while the doc took his heart rate, checked his blood pressure, and drew blood into a tube. The survey began with questions about symptoms not associated with his disease. Were there aches in his head? Was there blood in his stool? The questions segued into performance inquiries. Did he feel stronger, faster, more agile? “None of the above” was his answer du jour. He wasn’t taking enhancers and, now that he thought about it, his cancer symptoms were not acting up at all. He felt pretty much the same as when he’d arrived, only now he had a better tan. One of the most curious questions asked him whether he felt more “compliant” or more “rebellious.” He puzzled over it for a moment and then finally wrote “both” in the margin and moved on. The whole thing seemed like a waste of ten minutes of his short life.

  The doctor sat watching him fill out the form, studying him so that he felt like he was taking a proctored college entrance exam. He supposed it was her job. He handed her the finished papers.

  “All right. Turn around and drop your trousers.”

  “For what?”

  “There are a dozen diseases in this geographic region that you don’t want to catch,” she said completely without humor, hoisting the biggest syringe Cam had ever seen. “Now drop them.”

  “So when would you advise me to start taking TS-9, doc?” he said while he stuck his bare butt in the air. He copped a smile and tried to sound conversational.

  “All questions should be directed to your personal trainer,” she said. Then the injection came.

  “Holy…!” Cam couldn’t help wincing. It was the most pain he’d experienced by way of his butt since he’d pulled a glute freshman year. It wasn’t the “quick pinch” his doctor at home used to tell him was coming when he was a boy getting flu shots. She worked it back and forth for what seemed an eternity before sliding it out and slapping a patch over the hole.

  She ran her eyes down his survey answers while he pulled his pants up. “You may go.”

  Cam stood, confused. “But you didn’t examine me.”

  “You responded here that there was no change in your condition.” She pointed at the survey.

  “Yeah, but I’m dying of a brain tumor.”

  “That’s not a change, is it?”

  He looked around. Among the medical equipment was a treadmill, a weight bench, a tube thing with a mouthpiece to blow into. She’d not had him use any of them. “Everyone else took over an hour.”

  “You may go,” she repeated.

  Cam exited and closed the door behind him. This checkup wasn’t for me, he thought. Suddenly, he was angry. He didn’t know where it came from, but he felt it boiling up and decided not to stop it. I’m dying! And they don’t bother to examine me? And they won’t even offer me the wonder drug they’re handing out to everyone else like candy? He started down t
he hall toward the game room, and then stopped. He realized he had wanted some answers, and they hadn’t even let him ask questions. He turned and walked back down the hall to the examination room. He reached for the handle, but paused. Beyond the examination room was another door. Screw it, Cam thought. He walked past the exam room and shoved the next door open.

  Three startled men whirled and stared at him. They were dressed in lab coats. Before them on the table were nine vials of red fluid. My teammates’ blood, Cam thought. Behind them was a gurney. One of the men quickly pulled a sheet over it.

  “Oops,” Cam said cheerfully. “Wrong room.”

  The men glanced at each other.

  “Down the hall,” one of them finally said through gritted teeth. “The other way.”

  The second man nudged the first, and he hurried across the room to escort Cam out.

  “Sorry,” Cam said. “The doors look the same.”

  “No problem,” the man said thinly, turning Cam around and walking him toward the game room. “Right down here.”

  “Got it,” Cam said, and he smiled at the man. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  The last beach fire before the mission was quiet and short. No booze. Cam pulled Ari aside and asked him about the exam. He was surprised when his roommate grew testy.

  “It’s impolite to ask for people’s private medical information, Cam,” Ari said.

  Cam rolled his eyes and went to ask Jules, who blabbed every detail. As he suspected, the doc had done a number of physical tests on her that she hadn’t bothered to administer to Cam. Jules said their prior exams had taken several hours each, and they’d poked and prodded them much more extensively. Cam didn’t tell her about the other room. He wasn’t sure what he’d seen, and she didn’t seem the right person in whom to confide.

  Cam hit his bunk exhausted and sore from the week. His feet ached from running over the uneven ground and debris in the forest. His legs were as tired as they had been for the first week of fall soccer practice after every summer. He had bruises where Zara had worked him over with the padded poles during a melee workout, and the tattoo she’d inflicted on him hurt and itched. His teammates were sore too. Even Donnie had complained a little, though only under his breath when he thought no one could hear. But Ward assured them all they’d be well rested after their day of light work and a good night’s sleep, and they all went to sleep early. Cam wondered if he’d dream of pirates.

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  13. SEXT ME

  by Jackie Z

  14. MEET AND GREET

  by Melody Who-Who

  15. CHAOS

  by Demonkeeper

  “The image of me in your head,

  or that snap of me on my bed.

  Which one do you fantasize to?”

  Pilot woke them at dawn. “The boat leaves in fifteen minutes. Grab a shower, brush your teeth, and meet on the beach with your gear. You’ll eat breakfast at sea.”

  When Cam tumbled out of bed he found that Ari was already up and gone. He brushed his teeth quickly, then pulled on the swim trunks he wore daily and headed for the outdoor shower. He had to wait for Gwen. Watching her shower in her swimsuit was surprisingly uninteresting. She was frowny, all business, and had a routine—first her feet, then legs, torso, and hair last. Systematic. No surprises. Nothing missed, and nothing lingered upon.

  “I have finished,” she announced curtly. She stepped out, groping for her glasses almost before the water stopped flowing. She straightened them carefully, content only after they were perched on her nose just so, providing her with two little windows on the world. Or windshields, Cam thought.

  The team gathered at the shoreline. No Ward. No Pilot. Ari was nowhere to be seen either.

  “What the hell?” Donnie complained.

  “Still two minutes,” Gwen said, tapping her cell phone. They’d all been given cheap phones just for show. They’d almost certainly be taken immediately and weren’t meant for use, but the simple gadgets told time and had an overhead map of the pirate compound that could be accessed only with the code word—DEATHWING.

  “Look,” Owen said. He pointed out to sea.

  A rigid inflatable boat approached, its outboard motor humming. Donnie said he could see Ari’s black hair from a distance before Cam could even make out the shape of a person.

  They murmured among themselves, speculating, but Cam knew that Ari would fill them in as soon as he arrived, so he didn’t bother to take up any brain space wondering. The ten-person craft surfed an incoming wave, and Ari tilted the engine out of the water at the last minute so that it glided entirely up onto the beach and lurched to a stop right at their feet with him perched on the bow like a ship’s figurehead. The little guy certainly liked to make an entrance, Cam thought.

  “All aboard!” he shouted happily over the surf.

  “We’re all going to cram into a rubber kiddie raft?” Gwen said, frowning.

  “This is a Zodiac,” Ari said, indignant. “Top of the line.”

  Gwen climbed in, unimpressed. Minutes later, they were all bouncing out past the surf. Ari drove like a kid with a new toy, his smile broad and genuine. Cam stood beside him while the others sat.

  “Johnson outboard,” Ari explained. “American made. This craft is the consumer version of what the military uses.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You know that kid who had every toy car, boat, and plane? The dorky one who built models and had a bunch of remote control crap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I was that kid. Only now I’m old enough to drive the real thing.” Ari tilted his head back and whooped into the spray as they hit a wave. “Woo-hoo!”

  Ari steered toward the southern cliffs, and the boat climbed over the rolling water. Cam put his headphones on and punched up a song, taking note of the landscape south of the compound. It was treacherous, steep and heavily forested. Trying to get to the condos and bunker wasn’t only difficult because of the cliffs, it was almost impossible because of the terrain that preceded it. Cam noted that it was probably also impossible to go the other direction.

  They came around a point, and Ari looped into a protected cove. To Cam’s surprise, a sizable white yacht floated at anchor ahead of them. It was a sixty- or seventy-footer—one or two million dollars’ worth of vessel, Cam estimated.

  “Ward says we should avoid contact with civilians,” Donnie advised as they motored into the cove. He pointed at the yacht.

  “It looks empty to me,” Ari said. He winked at Cam and steered directly toward it. When Donnie began to protest again, Ari raised a hand to silence him. “Trust me, Donnie.”

  They pulled up to the stern of the yacht, and Ari shimmied up the ladder hanging down the back.

  “Anyone there?” Cam called up.

  “No one but us,” Ari said.

  They all glanced at each other.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Cam replied.

  Ari held up a set of keys.

  “Yes!” Wally yelled, and he flew up the ladder.

  The others stampeded past Cam, who stood in the Zodiac, stunned.

  “Cam, throw me the line and let’s haul that dinghy up here,” Ari called down. “We are going pirate hunting in style!”

  The yacht was spacious for ten young adults. The main deck had a kitchen and common area. The lower three cabins held two bunks and two large beds. Ari stood at the controls on the upper deck and took her out.

  “You know how to operate this thing?” Cam asked.

  “This ‘thing’ is a Ferretti 630, I’ll have you know—a million five worth of boating goodness. And what do you think I’ve been doing all week while you chumps were playing darts and going for swims? This was my training.”

  The cruising time was nearly ten hours, according to Ari, and so they had eight hours free before they needed to start their prep.

  The refrigerator was fully stocked. Ari and Pilot had made some inroads on the food supply during th
e week to make the boat look lived in, but there was still plenty.

  Jules decided to prepare a meal for everyone, explaining that she cooked for her family back home and missed it. “It’s hard to believe I’ve only been gone a couple of months,” she said, her eyes tearing up. Then she excused herself to the kitchen to get started.

  The others scattered about the large deck. Cam stood out over the ship’s prow with his arms spread and fists thrust forward, listening to “Ace in the Hole” at near maximum volume. It was an anthem of sorts, but a touch discordant and not for everybody. He found he preferred bands’ less famous songs and wondered what that said about him.

  Donnie, Gwen, and Owen sat around a deck-side table in the stern, continuing to review strategies and scenarios. It wasn’t required, Ari said, but it wouldn’t hurt them any either. Tegan had found a deck of cards and played solitaire, although he seemed to spend most of his time chasing stray cards that the light ocean breeze slid askew. Wally had gone with Pilot in the helicopter. He would be launched miles away with a radio receiver and hang glide into the action if necessary.

  “Relaxing is a good idea too,” Ari said to Cam when he came into the cabin.

  “You going to drive all ten hours?”

  “If I can.” Ari still had the big smile on his face.

  Cam decided to visit the girls. Calliope was helping Jules create a sort of chicken Parmesan out of frozen breasts and a hard cheese they’d found in the crisper. Music from a satellite channel blared from portable speakers. They made small talk as they worked, avoiding the topic of the mission. But the kitchen was not big enough for the three of them. Cam lingered a bit, but found he was mostly in the way.

  Everyone seemed able to occupy themselves except him. But he didn’t believe anyone was honestly relaxing in the face of the impending raid. Even those who were no longer prepping couldn’t ignore that it was coming.

  The ship’s cabins were downstairs in a short hall. An escape of sorts. Cam trotted down to check them out. There were three doors. One of them stood slightly ajar, just a crack, and light leaked out. Cam frowned and walked over to investigate. He pushed it wide and stepped into the room. A bedroom. But something was wrong. The door swung closed behind him suddenly, and he was thrown forward onto the bed. The person on top of him pinned one arm. He flailed with his other, until his fingers were forcibly bent backward.