Amanda's Story

by Brian O'Grady

  Amanda’s first thought was that Charlotte had indeed been shot. In just a few seconds she had soaked the front of her blouse. Amanda did the only thing she could think of and grabbed a folded towel and smashed it into Charlotte’s face. She squeezed the woman’s nose and eyes and led her to the only clean cot. “Charlotte! Charlotte! I need you to hold this,” Amanda said, bringing the woman’s right hand to the towel. “Now squeeze as tight as you can. It’s just a nose bleed,” she lied. Charlotte lifted her head, exposing her neck and a fresh set of blood-filled blisters. In the few minutes that it took to get her down and the bleeding under control, Amanda watched them spread like a living organism down her neck into her chest. “Oh my God, it hurts,” Charlotte moaned through her blood-clotted nose and mouth.

  “Let me get you something. Just lie right here; we don’t want the bleeding to start all over again.” It took her only a few minutes to find and administer the morphine. Charlotte was finally calm enough for Amanda to take away the blood-soaked towel, and even after all she had been through, Amanda was not prepared to see what lay beneath. Large strips of skin had come away with the towel; all of the skin on Charlotte’s nose and lower forehead had sloughed down to a bloody pulp. Her ragged eyelids refused to close completely, and the conjunctiva of each eye protruded with tense red blisters. Amanda looked away in horror and quickly stood. The only saving grace was that by this point Charlotte was only barely conscious from the morphine.

  She glanced over at Bernice, who had rolled towards all the commotion, and then to the cot two over from Bernice and saw the face of Cami. Like Charlotte, her face was in tatters, her unseeing eyes staring at the roof of the tent. Amanda waited a moment and then reluctantly walked the ten feet and covered her body. She couldn’t bring herself to close the eyes on the mutilated face.

  “Where are you, dear?” Bernice’s voice was soft and raspy.

  “I’m right here,” Amanda answered, stepping quickly away from Cami’s body.

  “My mind’s pretty clear now, Amanda. I heard what happened to Larry and I can guess what’s happening to Charlotte. Are you all right?”

  “Physically.” She knew what was coming.

  “I’m well down that road now,” Bernice said simply. “I know this is hard for you, and I’d do it myself if I could.”

  “What is happening here?” Amanda was angry—angrier than she had ever been. Angry with Larry for leaving them, angry at Stephen for getting shot, angry at Charlotte for being a screaming bitch, and angry at Bernice for what she was asking her to do.

  “I’ll ask the Lord for ya’, and then I’ll get a message back to you.” Bernice smiled and her lip cracked and started to bleed. “Oh my, I’m gonna ruin my dress,” she said, wiping the blood with a blistered hand.

  “I can’t do this; I’ll be alone,” Amanda cried pitifully.

  “You’re gonna be alone no matter what you do. What was your husband’s name?”

  Amanda didn’t follow the sudden change in topic. “Michael.”

  “Michael. ‘Who is like God.’ Could there be a better name? I’ll bet he was tall and handsome. He have long blond hair like you?”

  “Bernice, my hair is short …” Amanda said through tears. “No, Michael was a Marine and got used to short hair.” She dropped her head and everything started to slow to an almost peaceful pace.

  “That ain’t right. I’ll change that for you. Now tell me, what was your son’s name?” Reluctantly, Amanda reached for the IV and opened it wide.

  “Josh,” she said. “He was two and liked to do somersaults.”

  “Josh. Short for Joshua?”

  Amanda nodded, then said, “Yes.”

  “Good strong name. ‘Jehovah is Salvation.’ Should be Jesus is salvation, but I’ll bet your Michael has that allll straight now.” Her voice was slowing. “You remember what I told you when we was come down here? You need to find out what’s important to you and cling to it. Me and Jesus are going to take care of your Michael and Joshua until you get up to see us, but you still got some work down here. You understand me?”

  “Yes.” Amanda’s heart was breaking.

  “Now give me a kiss.” Amanda bent down and gave Bernice a kiss on her cold forehead. “That was nice. Now give me one more, right here.” She tapped her right cheek, and Amanda gave her a second kiss. “That was even better. Now, one more, right here.” She tapped her left cheek. And again she gave Bernice a kiss. “Wonderful. The first was for me. The second one I’ll give over to Michael and the last goes to Josh. I might even give him a hug or two.” She smiled weakly and her grip became weak. “I’ll just hug Josh.” Her hand dropped from Amanda’s. “There you two are,” she barely whispered. “You’re every bit as pretty as your momma. Come and give me a hug; I got something for you.” Her voice faded away and she became still.

  ***

  It was hours before Amanda could return to the tent. For a time she debated following Larry’s lead by rushing the fence and ending it all in a sudden hail of bullets, but giving up, letting those bastards win, was adding insult to injury, and she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. They wanted her to rush the fence so they could shoot another American.

  “Fuck you,” she screamed at a group of soldiers, who watched with undisguised leers as she stomped through the grass. Shooting her wasn’t the only thing they wanted. “Disgusting, fucking pigs,” she screamed at them on her next lap. They were responsible for all the death and misery that surrounded her.

  No, she corrected herself. They’re mindless animals. It’s their masters, the ones who drove them. They’re the ones responsible. That spic Dr. Martinez and his pal General Regara. Amanda’s mind reeled with possibilities. They were the ones who created this infection. Maybe they even faked the hurricane to lure us down here. It was suddenly all so clear. That’s why the bastards made them take helicopters in, so the team would be deprived of long range communications. That’s why they hadn’t heard from home. That’s why the hospital ship had been turned away. It was all an elaborate ruse to conduct a human biologic experiment.

  “Bastards,” she screamed at the soldiers as she rounded the corner of the tent. They were being secretive now, not looking at her directly, fading away into the jungle where they could use their binoculars and cameras. Maybe she was their reward, the bone Martinez and Regara would throw to their dogs for watching the Americans die. And when they were done with her they would shoot her. Or, maybe they would shoot her first and then molest her corpse. “Fucking degenerate bastards,” she said to herself and then slumped in the grass, physical and mental fatigue overwhelming her.

  After a moment her mind began to clear. As much as she hated Dr. Martinez and his officious disinterest in their plight, he wasn’t responsible for it, and the soldiers who surrounded her weren’t waiting for a chance to rape her. They wanted to go home as much as she did.

  She closed her eyes and willed herself to be anywhere but here, but when she opened them she was still sitting in the tall grass with bugs crawling all over her. She studied them and tried to figure out why she had always harbored a fear of bugs. They were fascinatingly complex and diverse.

  “When I get home, maybe I’ll become an entomologist,” she said to a large caterpillar-like bug that walked up her arm. She played with it for a while, and then finally turned her mind back to the task at hand. “Sorry little guy, there’s something I have to do,” and she placed the insect back in the dirt. She stood and looked at the covered body of Bernice Scott, and then with a start remembered Charlotte. Amanda had completely forgotten the petulant, rude woman and was a little ambivalent about the possibility that she had died alone.

  She slowly walked back to the tent, avoiding the wrapped body of Bernice. Charlotte was still asleep, but her breathing was ragged. She looked for another syringe of morphine, but had to walk by Bernice to retrieve it. After a long while Charlotte began to stir a
nd Amanda reluctantly fetched a handful of loaded syringes. When she returned, Charlotte’s eyes were open. Surprisingly, she didn’t look much worse, although it would have been hard to do.

  “I saw you out there.”

  “I needed to be alone for awhile,” Amanda answered with a touch of frustration and anger.

  “Is she gone?” Charlotte asked, and Amanda didn’t know if she meant Cami or Bernice.

  “Yes.” Amanda didn’t want to answer any questions. She was an emotional wreck. It seemed that everyone around her, including her present circumstance, died. Her father when she was a child, her mother when she was a young teenager, and her only brother just a few years later. Michael and later Josh had helped her bury them in her mind; it took another year to get Michael and Josh buried, and now it was happening all over again, except now they were all out of their graves and running around in her mind.

  “Was it peaceful?”

  “Yes.” She was about to ask Charlotte if she wanted another shot, but then decided to just give her one.

  “Wait.” She could see well enough to divine Amanda’s intent. “You were sick before,” Charlotte accused, her implication obvious.

  “I got better,” she answered, without giving the question much thought. She reached for the port on the IV and out of habit swiped it with an alcohol pad.

  “Hold on; I want to know something.” Amanda paused, needle in hand, and stared down into Charlotte’s ruined face, its expression lost in the blood and tattered flesh. “What makes you so goddamn special? Why do you get to live while everyone else dies?” It was meant to be mean and hateful, and she would never know how accurate her aim had been.

  Amanda got up, syringes in hand, and walked away.

  CHAPTER 13

  “As far as we can tell they arrived on the ninth, with a full platoon of Honduran SOG.” Captain Shore stood at attention, waiting for his commanding officer to give him permission to stand at ease.

  “That was nine days ago and we’re just hearing about this now?” Rear Admiral Howard Hemming was commander of the US Navy’s 4th Fleet and had been ordered to redeploy six capital ships immediately. The Chief of Naval Operations himself had informed Hemming that he was to personally attend to it. “Relax, Captain, and sit down. We have some work to do.”

  Captain Shore sat only because he had been instructed to; he maintained an at-attention posture, waiting for his commander to stop pacing behind his desk. “They contacted the State Department five days ago and told them that everything was being handled.”

  “And no one followed up!” The admiral slammed his open hand against the wall and the room shook. Hemming was a large man, and the urban legend that circulated their Jacksonville home port was that when the admiral was a mere lieutenant, and flying jets off of the very carriers he now commanded, on two separate occasions the steam catapult that launched planes off the deck failed immediately after Hemming’s plane took off. “What a bunch of know-nothing jack-asses.”

  Shore had been braced for a more colorful tirade. “The information that we have is that there is now only one survivor.” Normally he would have used the word “intelligence,” but decided on “information” to avoid the inevitable reaction. Despite outward appearances, Captain Shore knew the admiral to be a cerebral man, highly intelligent, well-educated and read, with more than thirty years of experience to bolster his academic credits. He balanced that with a deep passion, and occasionally a blind spot, for anything American or Navy.

  “So thirteen of our people died and those sons of bitches just stood around and watched. How much firepower do you think it would take to finish what that hurricane started?” He stared seriously at the captain and then smiled. “All right, that’s enough of my bitching; let’s try to solve this problem. What do we know about this General Regara?”

  “Old Honduran family with lots of connections.”

  “To the old government or the new one? Wait, let me guess, both?”

  Shore nodded. “Relatively honest. He does have his hand in at least one Columbian cartel’s pocket.”

  “Hell, no one’s innocent down there. Why did they wait so long?”

  “I get the feeling from State that the local officials really thought they had a handle on things. The bureaucrats dragged their feet some, probably because they’re still angry over our lack of support for their coup. I get the sense that they would have acted faster had they known what they were up against.”

  “So what are they up against? It looks to me that they lost a whole city.” The admiral’s desk was covered in satellite photographs. “And then they started burning bodies?” He shook his head in disgust.

  “All we get from them is that they have quarantined the area and stopped the spread of some illness. They suggest that it’s some version of Ebola.”

  “I read that. Is it credible? Because it sounds to me like they just hung the nastiest label they could think of on this giant mess to justify some very questionable behavior.”

  “We have to assume that it is correct.”

  “Okay. Redirect the battle group. Tell them I want them on station before noon tomorrow. They’ll have to move, but shouldn’t have to blow out any boilers getting there.”

  “They will permit only one helicopter to land.” Shore braced for the admiral’s reaction.

  “How do they expect us to make that work?” he asked without embellishments.

  “We can only take the survivor. The bodies have to stay.”

  A thirty-second string of very creative profanity followed. The admiral hit his intercom button. “There’s a Honduran general named Regara. Find him. I want him on the phone, now.” He smashed the button and sat loudly into his chair.

  “Would you like me to stay, sir?”

  “Yes. Your presence tempers my behavior.”

  The intercom buzzed a few minutes later. “On line three, sir.”

  “Damn, that was fast,” Hemming said, picking up the phone. “General, good of you to take my call. Bruce Calloway sends his regards.” In friendlier times, Bruce Calloway and the US Special Forces had trained the Honduran Special Operations Group, one of the units Regara commanded. The conversational gambit was false; Hemming had never met Calloway; he was simply trying to set a tone. “I’ve got you on speakerphone with my XO Captain Shore.”

  “Good morning, Admiral. I’m afraid I will have to dispense with the pleasantries, as you can imagine I have my hands quite full.”

  “All right.” Hemming took a breath and cracked his knuckles.

  Shore smiled. Low-grade animosity suited Hemming much better than artificial civility.

  “We have been informed that only one sea-based helicopter will be permitted to land and that the bodies of the thirteen deceased will not be repatriated. Is this true?”

  “Yes. It is not optimal, nor is it my idea. I have simply been ordered to see it done, as I assume you have as well.”

  “We have the capacity to take them all home, General. It would relieve your country of the burden.”

  “I agree with you, Admiral, but others do not. Our two governments have agreed to this and it falls to us to work out the logistics.”

  The situation became clear to Shore: Regara objected, but didn’t have the authority to change things.

  “We will be available tomorrow at thirteen hundred local time. I will send three helicopters in hopes that between now and then our representatives will come to their senses.”

  “I agree, but as it stands, I am permitted to only allow one into Honduran airspace. If there is nothing else, I must say good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, General.” Hemming replaced the phone and turned to his adjunct. “A man of few words. Get a Chinook out to Teddy and tell them to send along a couple of Seahawks as well. Go get our people back.”

  “Once we get her, what do we do with her?”

>   “The survivor is a woman? I don’t know why I assumed it was a man. I guess my wife is right; I am a misogynist.” He reached for a single sheet of paper. “A representative of the Combined Services Medical Group will then assume control. The representative, a Colonel William Bennett, will deploy with the rescue team.” He finished reading. “That comes from The Chief himself. Ever hear of the Combined Services Medical Group?” Shore shook his head. “Neither have I.”

  CHAPTER 14

  There were very few places she could go. Four days ago she had gently moved Bernice’s body into the old radio tent. She had left Charlotte and Cami where they were, partly out of sheer vindictiveness but more because of practical reasons. The generator had failed and the tarp-covered bodies exposed to the tropical sun did what was expected of them, and there really wasn’t room in the radio tent for two more. The old medical tent, being surrounded by four decaying bodies, was off limits, as were the Honduran tents. This meant that the two women were still in their deathbeds, which left Amanda with only the eastern portion of the large tent—where the water and food had been stored—and all the grass between the tents and the fences to await death or rescue.

  She had walked through the grass enough to beat down a path, a feral energy driving her day after day. The Hondurans had fatigued from boredom and were stretched out in the eaves of the jungles. If there had been any gaps in the fence, she was sure that she could slip into the jungle unseen. Of course, that begged the question: what would she do next? The answer was fairly obvious—die from a bullet or exposure.

  On one of her uncounted laps around the big-tent, as Amanda had come to know it, she noticed that the twelve sheets of paper that chronicled the events of the last week were getting wet from the light drizzle that had just started. She had taken a full day after Bernice’s death to mourn the loss and adjust to her new situation, but before the second day had fully dawned she finished her account. She had accepted the fact that in all probability she would join Bernice sooner than either wanted, and in her mind the only thing that could make this obscene situation worse was the inevitable lies and half-truths that others would use to cover it up. She knew that in all probability her effort at setting the record straight was little more than a futile gesture, but it was all that was left to her. She gathered the papers and once again looked for a safe place to store them. It was more than reasonable to assume that once Amanda was gone, either alive or dead, the entire camp and everything in it would be burned, just as the Hondurans had burned the bodies in Tela. All the medical supplies and personal effects would be consumed in a purifying blaze, including her precious twelve sheets of legal paper. After once again scouring the entire tent for a safe, fireproof, and discoverable hiding spot, she dropped her work on to an empty exam table and slumped into the only decent chair open to her. If she was made to disappear, her work would not survive her for very long. Dr. Martinez, or someone just like him, would fashion the truth in any way that suited them, and the only thing she could do to prevent it was to survive. The drizzle had changed into a steady rain that drummed on the roof of the big-tent, and she spun her chair outward and watched as the soldiers started to run for cover. Their discomfort gave her an iota of delight.