Short Stories

by Lanyon, Josh

  Halfway up the staircase I heard the kitchen door bang. I heard voices. An unfamiliar mumble and a groan that sounded like Luke.

  He was alive.

  My heart sped up with a hope I hadn’t dared entertain until then. I snuck back down the squeaking staircase and darted over to the kitchen doorway. I had a quick glimpse of long, gray hair, a massive back, giant hands the color of mahogany. He was dragging Luke by his hair and collar across the floor. I could tell Luke was only partially conscious; he struggled feebly, kicking out like he was trying to get to his feet. His hands struck ineffectively at the powerful arms hauling him towards the cellar.

  The Forester slid him like a sack of potatoes across the floor.

  Luke groped blindly, and his hand found the butcher’s knife on the floor, closed on it.

  The Forester, still muttering that incoherent litany, kicked the knife out of his hand, and then reached for the meat cleaver on the counter.

  I stepped into the kitchen, thumb-cocked Luke’s revolver. “Stop,” I said breathlessly.

  He tossed Luke back down, and turned, cleaver in hand. His face was seamed with scars and grime, tanned like old leather. There were leaves and twigs in his hair. His eyes were muddy and lifeless. I saw that there was not going to be any reasoning with him, but I said, “Don’t do it.”

  He stepped toward me, and I instinctively stepped back, which I knew was a mistake. There was no way I was walking out of here while he was still standing. He lumbered toward me, and Luke grabbed for his ankle. The Forester slashed down at him with the cleaver — like you would swat at a mosquito.

  I fired.

  Saw the muzzle flash in the dim light, felt the gun kick in my hand. The bullet hit him in the shoulder. I’d been aiming for dead center, so that wasn’t so good. But I’d been distracted by my abject relief that he hadn’t cut Luke’s head in two, the cleaver crunching into the table leg, and missing Luke by inches.

  The bullet didn’t seem to faze The Forester. He yanked the cleaver free and flew at me. I clamped down on the trigger and emptied the remaining five bullets into his chest. He piled right into me, heavy and hot and stinking like a bear, and I banged into the door frame and then crash-landed on the floor — with him on top.

  The coppery smell of blood was in my nostrils; it was too dark to see him clearly anymore, just a black bulk crushing me. Wet warmth soaking into my jeans and shirt. I felt his teeth snapping against my throat, as I wriggled and kicked frantically to try and get free. Every second I expected to feel the meat cleaver chop into my bones. I swore and prayed and fought for my life.

  I managed to get out from under him; he didn’t come after me. I backed up along the floor. He just lay there twitching and shuddering, his breath rattling in his throat.

  Blood drenched my clothes, but I was pretty sure none of it was mine.

  “Tim?” Luke reeled into the doorway.

  “Hi,” I said faintly.

  He staggered forward, nearly fell over the Forester’s body, and then dropped down beside me, feeling me over blindly. “Are you okay? Did he get you?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m okay. He didn’t get me.” I put my arms around him. I needed contact with someone alive and warm and reasonably sane. I needed to reassure myself that Luke really was alive.

  He hugged me back. Hard. “You’re covered in blood. Are you sure… ?”

  “I’m sure.”

  And then neither of us said anything. After a time the thing on the floor stopped moving. Stopped breathing. I wondered if I should be feeling guilty about that too.

  Head buried in Luke’s shoulder I thought that somehow we were going to have to get back to Luke’s car, drive to where we could call for help, lead the police back here, spend the rest of the night giving our statements. I would probably be arrested, self-defense or not. Not held for long, hopefully, and I was pretty sure Luke would help me every way he could, and if I was lucky it wouldn’t even come to trial…

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” he said, and his hands felt kind and familiar, once again running over my arms and back, checking for injuries because what other explanation could there be for the way I was clinging to him.

  I didn’t misread him. He felt guilty as hell that he’d nearly got me killed, and grateful that I’d saved his life, and worried about what this was going to do to me, seeing that I wasn’t exactly the Rock of Gibraltar. I wondered if killing monsters was a strong enough foundation for building a friendship. We could be friends, right? Because friends were good, too.

  “Timmy?” The gentleness in his voice got me. I had to blink back the sting in my eyes.

  “Yeah. I’m fine,” I said, voice smothered in his shoulder. “I just… picked a really bad day to stop drinking.”

  * * * * *

  I was dreaming that Luke was kissing me. His lips, a little chapped, pressed warmly, sweetly against my own. My mouth quivered. I wanted to kiss him back, but already he was withdrawing.

  “Tim?”

  I opened my eyes. Luke leaned over me.

  “Hey,” I mumbled, sitting up. I had been sleeping against his shoulder, which was more than a little embarrassing. It was late afternoon, and we were sitting in Luke’s car on the street outside my brownstone. The sun shone brightly. The street was full of traffic, the sidewalk crowded with pedestrians. For a moment, I wondered if I’d dreamed the entire thing.

  I glanced at Luke, who looked as battered as I felt. He had a funny look on his face. “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, you know. High on life.” My neck felt broken and every muscle in my body felt bruised. I had a sprained wrist and a wrenched knee. I felt groggy, disoriented — and as always — thirsty. But…… it did feel very good to be alive. “Sorry for flaking out on you.”

  Luke said seriously, “Hey, you were there when I needed you.”

  I gave him a tired smile.

  I realized he was waiting for me to say good-bye and get out of his car. I said, “Thanks for convincing the troopers not to arrest me.”

  “Nobody wanted to arrest you. It’s a clear case of self-defense. I don’t think it’s even going to come to trial. Although there will probably be a hell of a lot of press.”

  “Yeah. Well.” I reached in the backseat for my blood-stiff clothes. I wasn’t sure why I’d brought them home; I was never going to wear them again. I stared at the gore-streaked bundle and hazily remembered stopping at a campsite with Luke, and showering, and changing into our spare clothes. After that…a comfortable gray blank. I didn’t even remember climbing back into the car.

  “Um…”

  I glanced back at him.

  “I can’t promise that every time we go out we’ll have this much fun, but…I’d really like to see you again.”

  I peered more closely at him.

  “I mean,” he said awkwardly, “If you’re not too fed up about, er, everything.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Hell, yeah.” He gave me that heart-stopping grin, but there was just a trace of uncertainty in his eyes. “Maybe next time we could just…I don’t know…go to dinner.”

  I stared at him. He was serious.

  I still had a chance with him. He knew I was a drunk and he still wanted to see me. He had seen me at my absolute worst and he was still interested. Still attracted. He knew what to expect, and he was still willing to give it a try.

  I so did not want to blow this second chance.

  But I didn’t want to be the guy responsible for taking the twinkle out of those eyes. I didn’t want to see the affection and attraction die out — to be replaced with weariness and disgust when I slipped up and fell off the wagon — and there were going to be a lot of slips and falls ahead of me. As much as I wanted to believe I’d never let him down, I knew I was going to let us both down before I got better. If I got better. If I was strong enough.

  It wasn’t easy, but I said, “I’d like that too. But I… probably shouldn’t answer till I’m…sober.”


  His gaze held mine and there was no disappointment, no impatience. In fact, his smile grew a little warmer, a little more confident. “Okay. I can respect that.”

  I realized I wanted his respect — among other things — almost as desperately as I wanted my own. All at once it was hard to control my face. I turned towards the door, and he put a hand on my arm.

  “Listen, Tim. Sometimes it helps if a friend goes with you the first couple of times.”

  Oh. He meant to AA or wherever. I already knew I was going to need more help than that. “I don’t need someone to go with me, but it would help to know I had a friend…waiting.”

  “You have a friend waiting.” He leaned forward and kissed me, his mouth warm and insistent. His eyes met mine. “And just so you know, that’s hello.”

  Until We Meet Once More

  Until We Meet Once More

  It ain’t over till it’s over. This story, written in 2009, was another contribution to a charity anthology. It combines some of my favorite elements, including action and adventure and sifting through the baggage of old relationships.

  Anchors Aweigh, my boys,

  Anchors Aweigh.

  Farwell to foreign shores,

  We sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay.

  Through our last night ashore,

  Drink to the foam,

  Until we meet once more.

  Here’s wishing you a happy voyage home

  Anchors Aweigh - Lt. Charles A. Zimmerman

  Present day, 0001, Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan

  “What we don’t want,” Lt. Colonel Marsden said, “is another Roberts’ Ridge.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Army Ranger Captain Vic Black was thirty-two, a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair prematurely silver at the temples, and eyes a color a former lover had once referred to as “jungle green.” Those light green eyes studied his commanding officer as Marsden, his face lined with weariness, looked instinctively at the silent phone on his desk.

  Vic understood only too well what Marsden was thinking. The parallels between this rescue operation and the disastrous Battle of Takur Gar — commonly known as Roberts’ Ridge — were painfully clear. In the Battle of Takur Gar the rescue of a Navy SEAL had resulted in two helicopters getting shot down and the deaths of seven U.S. soldiers — including the Navy SEAL, Petty Officer First Class Neil C. Roberts. Yeah, the last thing anyone wanted was another Roberts’ Ridge.

  Marsden admitted, “I know what you’re thinking, but we’re in better position to get their man out even if they didn’t have their hands full with Akhtar Shah Omar on the other side of the valley.”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” Vic said woodenly. Well, it was one of the things the rangers were there for. Rapid response. Rescue. Whatever was needed. Like the SEALs, the Rangers were an elite special operations force, highly trained and able to handle a variety of conventional and special op missions — everything from air assault to recovery of personnel or special equipment. This missing Navy SEAL seemed to qualify as both of the latter.

  “No QRF. No TACP. No USAF. Just a three-man rescue team carried in by a MH-47 Chinook and inserted at 0200 hours 1000 meters on the Arma mountain range.” Marsden pointed to a place on the map.

  “Has there been any further communication from the surviving SEAL?” Vic asked, scrutinizing the map. Those impenetrable mountains were riddled with Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Another enemy was the weather — it was winter now — and the brutal terrain. The Shah-i-Kot valley and surrounding mountains provided natural protection. For the last 2,000 years Afghan fighters had successfully resisted everyone from Alexander the Great in 330 B.C., to the British Army in the 1800’s to the Soviets in 1980.

  “No,” Marsden replied. “But this is a valuable man with valuable intel. They — we — need him back.”

  “That’s what rangers do. Kick down the doors, take care of business, and bring the good guys home safe and sound.”

  Marsden met Vic’s gaze — reading him correctly — and grimaced. “I know, Vic. I know. He may be dead. But his IR strobe is still active and a Predator drone live video feed showed him on his feet and making for the landing zone as of two hours ago.”

  “Good enough,” Vic said. And he did mean that. If there was a chance of getting that poor bastard off that fucking mountain in one piece, he was willing to try.

  “If we’re all very, very lucky, you’ll be in and out before the enemy ever knows you dropped by.”

  Vic nodded curtly. They would all certainly be very lucky if it went down like that. If he developed that kind of luck, he might take up betting on the ponies fulltime when he got back to the States next month. “Does this frogman have a name?” he inquired.

  “Lt. Commander Sean Kennedy.”

  The wallop was like…looking both ways only to get hit by a passing freight train.

  “Sean Kennedy?” Vic repeated faintly.

  “You know him?”

  Marsden was staring at him, and no wonder. Vic’s nickname wasn’t “Stoney” for nothing. He managed to say evenly, “If it’s the same man. Yeah. I knew him. A long time ago.”

  “Sean Kennedy is a common enough name.” Marsden was still eyeing Vic curiously. “Well, it’s a small world, and that’s a fact. Good friend, was Kennedy?”

  “Yes.”

  The best.

  And more.

  “Funny how things work out,” Marsden said, seeming to be in one of his philosophical moods. “Well, whether this Kennedy is your Kennedy or not, it looks like it’s your job to bring him home. You deploy at oh one hundred hours.”

  * * * * *

  Twelve years ago, 0005, Beneath the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland

  Eerie blue light bathed the marble sarcophagus of John Paul Jones.

  “Jee-zus, you’re one crazy sonofabitch,” Midshipman Second Class Sean Kennedy said admiringly — though this was very much the pot calling the kettle black. “Remind me not to gamble with you again.” He looked around the chamber with awe.

  “Yeah, yeah. Pay up.”

  “You want a blowjob in a crypt?”

  Hell, provided Sean Kennedy was the guy at the other end of his dick, Vic would have welcomed a blowjob inside the sarcophagus.

  “Are you chickening out?” Vic asked in a hard voice because if Sean was, Vic was liable to strangle him out of sheer frustration and murderous disappointment.

  Ever since he’d seen fellow plebe Kennedy laughing down at him from the top of Herndon Monument — sunlight gilding his chestnut hair and honey-colored skin, turning his hazel eyes gold — he’d wanted him. Wanted him so bad it kept him up at nights. And it hadn’t helped when they’d become friends. Or roommates. And if it hadn’t been for the presence of their other bunkmate, Midshipman “Specs” Davis…

  But then Vic had known he had a problem from the time he was fifteen. He was eighteen now. Oh, he liked girls okay. But not the way his friends did. In fact, he felt a little queasy listening to the stuff his friends talked about wanting to do to chicks. Vic liked to jack off in front of the mirror in his bedroom at home — position himself so he couldn’t see his face, just watch his hand moving on his dick, watch his dick thicken and lengthen, and pretend it was someone else’s hand and someone else’s dick.

  And then he’d met Midshipman Fourth Class Sean Kennedy and figured out whose hand he wanted — and whose dick. Because it turned out that Kennedy had the same problem.

  “I’m not chickening out,” Sean said evenly. “You won your bet.”

  Yep. He’d won his bet — and if they got caught, they were both out. Finished. Washed up. And goddamn if it didn’t feel worth the risk standing there in the creepy darkness of the crypt beneath the chapel, Sean’s eyes gleaming as they watched him. Not trusting himself to speak, hands shaking a little, Vic unzipped his uniform trousers.

  Sean’s shadowy figure dropped to its knees before him and Sean’s mouth — lips so soft and tongue so ho
t and wet — closed around Vic’s cock.

  Vic groaned. He couldn’t help it. But the sound reverberated off the marble floors and stone walls like old John Paul Jones had just noticed what was going on.

  Sean disgorged him, spat out, “Shut the fuck up!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not bilging out two years from graduation. Copy that?”

  “Copy that. Shut up and suck me.”

  He felt the huff of Sean’s laugh against his groin. “Bastard.”

  And then, to his abject relief, that marvel of a mouth closed around him again. Vic closed his eyes and concentrated on that wondrous wet tongue licking and lapping at the head of his dick. Vic shifted, stepped further apart to give Sean better access. Sean’s mouth closed around him and he began to suck in earnest. So good. So humblingly good, that fierce draw following the slow, reluctant repel, hard and soft, wet and hot.

  Vic opened his eyes. It gave him a sense of power too; staring down at Sean’s bent head, the dull gleam of his chestnut hair, the dark crescents of his eye lashes, and his mouth…

  Oh, that mouth.

  His gaze fell on one of the four giant bronze dolphins that braced the marble sarcophagus. The dolphin seemed to be sticking its tongue out at him. In the eerie blue light from above Vic could just make out the name “Ranger” carved in the marble floor above the “John” in John Paul Jones. All seven of the ships Jones had commanded were listed there.

  Two things eventually occurred to Vic: never again was he going to be satisfied with a girl blowing him — and Sean had done this before.

  In fact, Sean gave head like a he did it for a living. Like a professional whore. It made Vic angry and it made him crazy for more because it was so good. ‘Good’ being a feeble word for the best goddamned thing in the world.