THE TRASHMAN

by Terry McDonald

  “The Army National Guard to be exact,” Carl said.

  “Either you join up and are trained, or finish your coffee and are on your way. We won’t arm you though if you decide to leave now,” William said.

  Carl grinned at me. “Think of it man, like the slogan says, you’ll be an Army of One.”

  We finished our coffee and then they swore me in.

  *****

  After the ceremony, Carl took me to their small medical station and had me remove my shirt and lie on an exam table.

  “I’m not a medic, but I’m all you have. Major Allen wouldn’t know a pimple from a boil.” He brought a bottle of peroxide to the table. “Let’s get your wound cleaned so I can see what you’ve got going on.”

  He peeled off the front bandage by my navel. For a big man, he had a gentle touch. I barely felt his latex gloves swabbing my skin with peroxide soaked gauze pads. I did feel his fingers begin probing the area of my wound. He noticed me flinch.

  “Tender, huh? There’s a pocket of pus building behind the scab. Tell me the complete history of this wound.”

  I told him how it would infect and then after lancing it the wound would be better for a while and then re-infect.

  “The bullet may have nicked a portion of your intestines. I’m not a surgeon so there’s no way I’m going to open you up. What we can do is drain it again and put you on a stronger regimen of antibiotics. Beyond that all you can do is hope whatever’s causing the infection will heal of its own accord.”

  His cleaning was thorough and more painful than my self-treatment. Between my grunts and yelps of pain, while he was working I told him about my theory that I was able to survive the plague because my system was already full of antibiotics. He thought there was an element of plausibility and said he’d relay the information to William.

  He tore off a last strip of tape and laid it across the second bandage.

  “The exit end of your wound is healing. If the entry point continues to infect, all you can do is drain and clean. Maybe while you’re out, you’ll come across a doctor. Get dressed. The Major’s orders are for you to shower and then sleep until dinner. I’ll show you to your room. Officers’ quarters, private bath, kitchenette, real bed. I’m billeted in one, too.”

  I followed him from the medical station. We crossed a small courtyard to a building adjacent to the reception building. The Officers’ Quarters consisted of a large common area complete with a wet bar, pool table, a green card table, and a dartboard. Off to the side was a small dining area. Carl led me to the rear of the recreation room to a door that let into a long hallway. There were ten doors, five to a side.

  “The Major’s there,” he said pointing to the first door on the left. “I’m there,” pointing to the door across from William’s. He led me farther down the hall and opened the last door on the left.

  “Get settled. I’ll come get you later. Roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy, turnip greens and creamed corn is the menu this evening.

  The water from the hot tap was scalding. I adjusted the shower to as warm as I could stand and wallowed in luxury for a half hour.

  I had to wipe steam from the mirror to see myself. What I saw was a haggard, middle-aged man with a ragged growth of hair on his face. I was clean, but I looked like I’d aged five years over the past few weeks. I searched the medicine cabinet and the vanity drawers for shaving gear but came up empty.

  I lay on the bed and sleep grabbed me like a long lost friend. When Carl tapped on the door to announce dinner, I left the bed feeling fresh and rested.

  *****

  William ordered three days of rest before beginning my basic training. On the fourth day, Carl rousted me from sleep at 5:00 a.m., shouted at me the entire time I dressed, and had me outside running the inner perimeter of the depot fifteen minutes after my feet touched the tile floor beside my bed.

  He ran me until the pain in my side became too heavy. When he saw my hand pressing my wound, he called halt.

  “Ralph, I’m going to work you as hard as I can. We’ve got to turn you into a rock. You’re the only one who can call stop if something aggravates your wound. I’ll honor you as long as you give me your best all the way to your pain limit.”

  “Work me, Carl. I’m not there yet.” I took off running and he easily caught up and began verbally insulting me again, pushing me on.

  After the run, he shifted over to callisthenic type exercises. I stayed with him until the pain in my side was as much as I could stand and then gave him another five minutes. When I called stop, he saw I was in pain.

  “Hit the shower. Hot. When you get out, do some stretches. We breakfast in one hour, and then class. Lunch, and then it’s back out here for as long as you can take it. I’m going to go slack on you for the next two weeks and order you to take a hot shower after every physical session. Remember to do your stretching.”

  Carl and I dined alone. “Where’s William?” I asked.

  “Control room. We have listening devices and surveillance cameras every thirty feet of the fence. We don’t want to arm the robotic weapons except as a last resort. We both have nightmares thinking the machine will gun down a bunch of women or children. William and I do twelve-hour shifts at the monitors. For your training period, we’ll modify our schedules as needed. I’ll relieve him and he’ll be you instructor for the rest of the morning and this afternoon. After dinner you and I will be back outside.”

  I waited in the dining hall while Carl went to relieve William. I was startled to see how tired the Major looked.

  “Carl said he gave you a good workout. You ready for some class work?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re in the Army, private. That’s, ‘I am, Sir.’”

  Startled by his demeanor, I snapped to attention and shouted as I’d seen in movies. “I am, Sir.”

  William burst out laughing. “’Got you!’ As I told you, we’ll keep it informal, but don’t forget you took an oath. I’m in charge and by proxy, Carl owns your ass, too. Keep that in mind, if you will. Now, soldier, get down and give me ten.”

  I knew what he meant. I lowered to the floor and gave him my best ten pushups.

  “Christ that was sloppy. Are you going to blame your lousy effort on your wound, soldier?”

  “No, I’m not. I blame it on being weak, but I’ll get stronger.”

  William grinned. “Carl’ll see to that. To begin with, your classes will be given in my quarters. Basic stuff, Army regulations and such. From there we’ll move to military tactics and weapons training.

  “Carl will be your range instructor. He is an expert marksman and knows this Army’s weapons inside and out. At this facility, we have both an indoor and outdoor firing range. Along the rear of the complex, we have a small mockup of an urban environment for training purposes as well.

  “Ralph, eight weeks from now you’ll walk out this door, maybe not the best you can be, but you’ll damn sure take with you all we can give.”

  I could see he was serious. “William, I don’t have words to express my gratitude. You look tired and I know my presence here has doubled, if not tripled your stress load. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “Noted, but for the next four weeks if you keep up with the pace we set, you’ll be too tired to do anything but grab sleep time. We’ll access your abilities mid-training. Perhaps you’ll be able to take an occasional guard shift. We’ll see.”

  William was right about sleep time. Carl paid attention to my pain level, but I did my best to hide it from him until I simply couldn’t stand it. By the time he released me each evening at 10:00, I barely had strength to shower and flop onto the bed. 5:00 a.m. always caught me by surprise. It was never a gentle awakening, either. He’d shout me out of sleep, kicking the edge of my mattress at the same time. Every time it was the same phrase. “Out of bed, pussy. Time for fun and games.”

  It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t a game. As the weeks passed, I could feel my muscles tighten
ing and my body mass growing.

  William did the class work regarding weapons training, showing how to break down, clean, and reassemble various arms, and instructing me on the use of explosives and detonators. He spent an entire week on how to locate ingredients for improvising weapons in the field.

  I learned how to make a bow and arrow, how to construct pitfalls and booby-traps, how to make explosives, ANFO, a mixture and fertilizer and diesel fuel being the simplest. Another easy one was a compound that could be used as both rocket fuel and explosive using only saltpeter and sugar, both of which could be easily scavenged from stores.

  The four-week mid-point of my training arrived. That morning after breakfast, William and Carl gave me an assessment on my progress. If was a very informal meeting held in the dining hall after the dishes were done and the kitchen cleaned, a chore I’d claimed as my own.

  I gave the counter a final swipe, dried my hands, and joined them at a table, pouring myself a cup of coffee.

  William nodded to acknowledge my presence and then turned to Carl.

  “Have at it, Carl. How’s our recruit doing body-wise?”

  “He’s not where I’d like him to be, but he’s giving it everything he has. The wound in his side is retarding progress. It seems to be getting better. Ralph doesn’t yelp like a baby as often as he did when we first started, but we do our training shirts off if the temp permits and I can see that his abdomen on his wound side is still distended. There is some sort of infection that our antibiotics can’t handle. Let me say this, though, in a batch of recruits at this stage, I’d rate him eight points out of ten. That’s if I were training Special Forces like I did up at Bragg. Regular recruits, even wounded, he’d be at the top of his class.”

  William had a grin on his face when he said, “Hot damn, Ralph. Carl just paid you one hell of a compliment. Let see if it holds four more weeks. Tomorrow, he begins range instruction with live rounds and martial arts training. When he first came here, I enrolled in his after duty class. Carl is a natural. He’s fast, nimble and he can kill you with his bare hands nine or ten different ways. He doesn’t hold back either, even though he’ll swear he does. I never left a session that I wasn’t limping or bruised.”

  I didn’t return his grin because I could tell William was speaking the truth. “I’ll take whatever lumps I get.”

  William said, “Lumps aplenty… I’ll keep my assessment simple. You learn quick and you retain what you’re taught. You approach each day with determination to do better than the day before. I couldn’t ask more from a soldier.”

  William turned again to Carl. “I know you can handle your end. Is there any particular area in class you’d like me to empathize?”

  “I can teach him how to kill, but I’d like you to turn him into a killer. Give him the motivation to pull a trigger, to snap a neck, to slit a throat. Killing in real life, especially cold-blooded murder is not easy. A killer has to know how to let go of the result, how to not let it eat at him. That job is yours, William.”

  William asked, “How about it, Ralph, can you pull the trigger, slash a man’s throat?”

  I thought about his question, thought about myself puking nearly every time I witnessed death. “I think I’m going to need your part of my training even more than Carl’s.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Carl said. “Taking another person’s life doesn’t ride easy. It’s even worse than you can imagine. Let me give you a real life example I experienced in Somalia.

  “On patrol, my squad witnessed a young beautiful woman who was maybe sixteen or seventeen-years-old entice a soldier in a truck to stop. As soon as he did and stepped from the vehicle, snipers opened fire on him. I watched his body jerk with multiple hits before he hit the ground.

  “Ralph, would you shoot that beautiful young lady?”

  I had to think about his question. Carl didn’t give me time to form an answer.

  “Did you see him pause to think?” he asked, his question directed to William. “I want that pause gone. Without hesitation, I want him to know that, hell yes he’d blow that bitch away. She was an enemy combatant and just as responsible for the soldier’s death as the men who pulled the triggers.”

  “Point made,” William said. “Ralph, do you have anything to add to this discussion?”

  “Yes I do. For starters, whatever it takes to rid the world of evil doers, I’ll learn if I’m able. I’ll give you everything I have to give.

  “From now on I’d like my training with William to be done inside the control room. That will free up several hours of his day. I also want to take a shift on guard duty. You guys are wearing yourselves out.”

  William nodded. “Agreed, but your shift will only be six hours. The most important thing on our agenda is to turn you into a fighting machine. Do you have anything else?”

  “Yes I do. You said you want this facility to be the nucleus for a community to form. You want me to send people to you. I have some questions that you have avoided answering. Where does the power for this place come from? No generators running, no solar panels on the roof.

  “How many people can you feed in the short term and for how long? It will take time for people to plant and harvest.

  “My main concern is this. Survival for the sake of survival wears out. What motivation will you give a community to even care about life?”

  Carl said, “He’s asking the questions. William?”

  William shrugged. “It’s time he knows. The power comes from an advanced self-contained nuclear power cell buried on the premises. Right now it’s running in idle mode, but even that supplies more power than we need. At full power, it could supply electric to the entire town of Moultrie.

  “As I told you, this facility was upgraded to be a major supply depot. Not only for weaponry and explosives, but food, medical supplies, clothing too. Everything needed to outfit and supply two thousand troops for five years is within the perimeter. Most of it is cached in underground bunkers.

  “You asked us about motivation. You must have some thoughts on this or you wouldn’t be asking.”

  I had given the subject thought. “I do. It’s a given with the reduction of the population that there is a wealth of supplies, vehicles, and equipment available to the survivors. What I think is most important is the knowledge base. Out there, outside the chain link and razor wire, the true wealth of our people, of humankind is in jeopardy of being lost.

  “I think your community will need a theme. I think it should be the gathering and preservation of knowledge. Every electronic reading device, every laptop, desktop, even digital music players hold vast amounts of our heritage. What better motivation could a community have?”

  William and Carl locked eyes. “He’s right,” Carl said.

  “Especially considering what we know,” William said.

  Suddenly I wanted to know what they knew that obviously I didn’t. “What? What do you know?”

  William spoke, “During the crisis, before the plague decimated our communications with other military units and bases, we were privy to knowledge beyond what was released on the airwaves.

  “The US and other major industrial nations experienced multiple meltdowns at nuclear power plants. Vast areas of the US, actually the world, are uninhabitable wastelands. All the Northern States, parts of the Midwest, California, and Texas are affected. The data we received was incomplete.”

  “How in the hell did the governments let that happen?”

  William answered my question. “The plague spread too fast. It takes time to put a reactor into safe mode. Time we didn’t have. Overseas things went even farther south. Iran and Israel went at each other with nukes. Pakistan and India had to press buttons too. Those four countries and a few of the surrounding ones are for all practical intent, gone.”

  “Do you have any more bad news?” I asked.

  “Only this. I doubt if there are more than a couple million people left alive in the lower forty-eight states. What is god
-awful is that the survivors of the plague are carriers. I want to impose another mission on your shoulders. We need a criminal subject that hasn’t been exposed. I’d like to try out your idea that large doses of antibiotics, taken during the plagues incubation period, has a retarding effect on the virus. Maybe the antibiotics fight the secondary symptoms. The pneumonia type sickness that seems to be the main reason people die.”

  “That gives you more reasons to train me, and for me to give it my all in return.”

  “You’re a good man,” Carl said. “I promise not to hurt you too much on the mat.”

  Carl lied. He hurt me plenty, but toward the end, I was giving tit for tat. Usually we both limped after a session on the mat.

  Carl was the killing machine William had bragged on. Tricky and devious, too, with lots of tricks up his sleeve. One day he showed me a standard piano-wire garrote.

  “Deadly machine,” he said, and tossed it into a corner. From a table beside us, he picked up a strip of plastic with crude wooden handles affixed to the ends.

  “This is my invention. I made this in less than thirty minutes. Nothing but a plastic tie like cops use for cuffs, only longer. Here’s the beauty of it. With the standard garrote, you have to stand with the victim, pulling the handles. Unless you do it perfect and cut his throat, he doesn’t die right away. He’ll fight, squirm, and do anything to get the wire off his neck. When you use the tie and yank it tight, it locks in place. Your hands are freed to defend yourself until he succumbs to asphyxiation.”

  William led me heavily into the art of guerrilla warfare. The number one thing is there are no rules.

  “Kill your enemy however you can. Shoot, burn, or blow them up. Intimidate them. Torture them. Keep the pressure on. Reduce their numbers by attrition. Ambush, booby traps, and sniping are your goals, never head-to-head confrontation. Attack, and retreat.

  “Night is your friend. Thunderous downpours can mask your activities. When your objective hunkers down to avoid a blizzard, that’s your element to use as cover. No force of nature will come between you and your target.”