by Terry Yates
When the jet had crashed into the ocean, he’d been barking orders into the radio. He’d been trying to find more helicopters to speed up the evacuation. He was just about to give Miami the big “Suck my nards!”, when he was knocked to the floor by the crash. He fell on his side, smacking his elbow hard on the floor.
“Kee-ee-rist, what was that?” he screamed aloud from the floor, the broken radio mike still in his hand.
His aide didn’t answer him. He was under a desk, arms over his head with his ass sticking out. The little shit was shaking.
“No quivering or quaking on my watch, Corporal!” he screamed.
The corporal remained under his desk, still ass up and shaking even harder. Potts, rubbing his injured elbow, rolled onto his back, reared his leg back, then kicked the corporal hard in the butt, causing him to lurch forward and hit his head on the desk.
“Get out from under that desk, Corporal, before I kick your little girly ass again!”
The sprawled corporal sat up under the desk and peered out, his two beady eyes reminding Potts of a possum about to venture out into the darkness.
“Get out from under there before I kick you in the vagina, you little maggot!”
The corporal began to scurry on his hands and knees toward his commanding officer. He slid the last few feet on his knees before kneeing Potts in the ribs causing the colonel to let out a loud “oof!”
“Help me up!” he said disgustedly.
“What just happened, Colonel?” the little corporal squeaked, now on his knees and helping Potts to his feet.
“How the Sam Shit should I know, Maggot! I was with you!” Potts shot back.
Corporal and colonel both made it to their feet. Potts yanked his arm away from the corporal as if it were being held by a leper.
“Get me my cap!” he screamed at the corporal.
Two hours later, Potts was standing in the island morgue watching the few remaining soldiers on the island carrying litters and gurneys piled high with body parts. He saw men’s heads next to women’s torsos. This was Beirut all over again. He had tried to get some sort of head count so he could radio Miami about the crash but at that moment, it didn’t seem plausible. He was pretty sure they already knew about it. Certainly, the pilot had radioed air traffic and told them of his plight. He had decided to wait until he had more information about a body count. He didn’t want to clog up the airways until he got everyone evacuated. The living were more important than the dead right now.
Potts heard a loud beep. The last MP, a Sergeant Cohen, reached down and removed his radio from its holster. Potts heard a squelched voice emanating from the walkie-talkie. The MP looked confused for a moment as Potts watched the man say, “Come back on that”. Potts heard the voice repeat what he hadn’t heard it say the first time. Sergeant Cohen “ten-foured” the voice, returned the radio to his belt, and began to walk quickly toward Potts.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Potts asked before Cohen could speak.
“That was the hospital,” Cohen answered, removing his helmet and running his hands through his graying hair.
“Tell them we’ll have them evacuated on the next go round,” Potts butted in. “After that…”
“No, Sir. That’s not it…”
Potts glared at the MP.
“Then what in Beelzebub’s balls is it! I don’t have time to guess!”
“Well, Sir,” the sergeant started.
Through clenched teeth, Potts quickly rotated his hands in an attempt to hurry up the process, the vein on his forehead sticking out ugly and purple, his blond flat top sticking up at all corners.
“There’s a survivor, Sir.”
CHAPTER 3
Kyler scratched his head again. Everything was normal. It didn’t make any sense. There had only been three complete bodies pulled out of the jet and all of them had been bent into pretzels. A few loose tendons had been the only things that had held them together. But here…here was not only a survivor, but a survivor who was completely intact. He had hundreds of cuts and burns and most of his skin was burned away. His hair was singed completely off, and his face was swollen and bloody, but he was completely whole except for his nose and lips, which were also burned away. No missing limbs…nothing. He just lay there in the oxygen tent, what was left of his nose and mouth covered by the oxygen mask. Nurse Walling was applying wet towels to take away the loose skin. She was glad he was in a coma. If he were conscious, the pain would be excruciating.
There was an awkward silence between doctor and nurse. When the John Doe had grabbed Kyler by the ankle, he had let out a scream that had echoed throughout the jet, and had traveled out across the water, over the near gale force winds, and onto the shore. Nurse Walling had thought that the doctor must’ve found a young girl and was treating her, but that was not the case. The young girl had been the doctor. The tall, young doctor, whom respect had just gone up a notch after having watched him swim solo out to the crash had let out a very undoctorly scream. She didn’t mind, of course. Anyone would’ve done the same thing. She figured that she would’ve probably fainted if someone had grabbed her by the ankle. Even after he had swum back with the naked man under his arm, he’d had a look of embarrassment on his face. He’d committed the ultimate doctor sin. Squealing. She had wanted to laugh and clap him on the back, but doctors, she knew, were a strange breed. They were never supposed to show emotion of any kind and he had let out a complete Pandora’s box full of them.
“Who do you think he is, Doctor?” Nurse Walling asked, trying to break the tension.
“No idea,” Kyler answered, not looking up. “His clothes were torn away.”
“He looks to be about your age,” she said, looking his body up and down.
“How can you tell?”
The nurse picked up the man’s charred arm by the wrist.
“The hair follicles that he still has left are dark black. See right there?”
Kyler peered down at the man’s arm. Indeed, there were several small, unburned patches of skin where the hair had not been singed away. She was right. They were black in color and very fibrous. Kyler noticed an ugly jagged scar on top of the man’s wrist.
“Good eye.”
“And look here.”
Nurse Walling put her hand to his neck. Again, most of the flesh was gone, but there was still an area under his chin that still remained intact.
“No loose skin. It’s all tight…and look, no double chin.”
She was right again. He was a youngish man, but no one would know it by the look of him. He looked like one of those mummified corpses he saw on the History Channel.
“Even if he makes it, this is unfortunately going to be the way he’ll look.”
Kyler wanted to kick himself. What a ghastly way for a doctor to talk. He was expected to be stoic and stone-faced in these situations. Doctors were supposed to treat a skinned knee and third degree burns over the entire body in exactly the same fashion. Plus, you never knew if the patient might actually be conscious even when modern medical machinery said different. He had heard of cases where people were supposed to be on the operating table, and under anesthesia, then repeat back verbatim exactly what the doctors and nurses had said during the operation. He’d heard of coma victims who wake up after months and tell people that their brother had said this or their auntie had said that to them while they were unconscious. He hoped that this poor bastard hadn’t heard him.
Ten minutes later, Kyler heard the sound of footsteps walking speedily down the hospital corridor. He could tell they were military by the way the shoes squeaked. He heard a muffled voice telling people to get out of the way. After a moment, Col. Potts stomped into the room.
“Who the hell is he?” he asked at top volume.
“Quiet, Colonel.” Nurse Walling answered in a loud whisper. “Keep your voice down.”
“Go unclog a colostomy bag, Nurse!” he shot back even louder, “I don’t have time for a loudmouthed douche Frau right now!”
>
“Nurse Walling, would you go get me some fresh bandages, please?” Kyler asked, stepping into the small space that was closing between the two adversaries. He thought he had spotted Nurse Walling reaching for an empty bead pan. The nurse squinted her eyes at Potts, who merely stared back, his steely eyes almost completely blue, the pupils having shrunk to the size of pinheads.
“Now. Please, Nurse Walling,” Kyler demanded in a low voice. He was almost nose-to-nose with Potts.
Nurse Walling made a low hissing sound, and then left the room, looking back over her shoulder and sneering at Potts one last time.
“Now, who is he? What do you know about him? C’mon, Doc. I don’t have all day!”
Kyler relished his position. He didn’t personally know Potts, but he knew that Potts was a hardass who had to know everything that happened on the island.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Colonel Potts?”
With this, Kyler stepped back and opened the curtain covering the oxygen tent.
“Holyjeezfeckinkeerist!” Potts bellowed.
Kyler was disappointed. He had expected Potts to shriek like a girl…as he himself had done earlier that day. He secretly hoped that Potts would spew his breakfast all over the floor, but that didn’t happen. True, Potts was stunned by the man’s appearance, but that was it. To Kyler, it was like igniting a huge firecracker, only to have it fizzle out in the end.
“What you mean…ask him yourself? He’s in a coma and has no lips for Christ’s sake!”
The doctor’s attempt at sarcasm had been lost on the colonel.
“Yes, I know, Colonel. I…”
Before Kyler could finish his sentence, Potts surprised him further by stepping closer to the bed and bending down within inches of the John Doe’s hideously burned face.
“My God, he’s ugly, isn’t he?” Potts asked, this time his normally loud voice muted somewhat, not out of caring or respect, but more out of awe.
“Colonel, please…”
“Is there any way that we can find out who he is, Doc? Fingerprints…DNA maybe?”
Kyler stepped up next to Potts and gently lifted the man’s hand.
“I think fingerprints are out of the question,” he answered. “Look.”
He turned the palm over and showed Potts the severed finger pads.”
“He’s got no fingerprints,” Potts said, closely scrutinizing each finger, once again unfazed by the magnitude of the injuries. “They’ve been burned away.”
“I don’t know how he managed keep all of his fingers or even his hands for that matter. Those and the feet are usually the first things to go.”
“Humph! Potts mumbled standing up straight again. “Well, how can we find out who he is?”
“We’ll probably have to wait until we get the passenger list. You did ask for a passenger list, didn’t you?”
Potts paused for a moment. He hadn’t even thought of a passenger list.
“Of course…well, I thought of it, but I came directly here and…wait a minute. How exactly is the passenger list gonna help us? I mean, from what I’ve seen of the bodies down at the morgue, we’ll never be able to figure out who was who.”
“We can narrow it down a bit,” Kyler answered. “We can probably separate the male parts from the female parts. After that, we can try a couple of things. Those whose clothes weren’t burned away might still have their wallets on them. Maybe we can get their identities that way, plus some were still strapped to their seats when they were dragged in. Some jet seats may have the numbers written or stenciled on them, I have no idea, but if any of them do, we can check the numbers against the passenger list.”
“What if it was open seating?” Potts asked.
“A jet that size is generally first class seating.”
“They’d have assigned seats.”
“Exactly.”
Kyler watched as Potts mulled this over before continuing.
“Then we check for things like their age, if they had a certain tattoo, a special type of watch, a class ring. Anything. Then when the families come to claim them, we show them what we’ve got, and that’ll eliminate a few more. I’m sure there are bodies that’ll never be recovered. They either flew out of the plane, or drifted out to sea before they were recovered, but we can eliminate a lot of people. We figure this man’s about thirty and he has dark, brown eyes. Who knows? Someone may recognize him as is.”
For the first time since Potts entered the room, Kyler thought he almost saw the colonel start to smile, but that quickly ended when Nurse Walling entered the room carrying an armload of fresh bandages.
“Still here, I see,” she remarked as she headed for the patient.
“Still ugly, I see,” Potts shot back.
“Colonel, please…” Kyler started.
“She started it.”
“I don’t care who…I don’t believe I’m saying this! Colonel, if you could check on that passenger list, please.”
“I’ll get right on it. This only goes to prove my theory.”
“What’s that?” Kyler asked.
“That everyone should have to wear dog tags.”
With this, the Colonel turned to leave.
“Oh, Colonel.”
“Yes?”
“Two things. One…when are the helicopters coming back? I’ve still got six patients who need to be evacuated.”
“I’ll make the call now. And the second?”
“If we’re going to have any chance at all at identifying those people, we’re going to need to make sure the morgue is battened down good.”
Potts put his hand to his chin.
“Good idea. We don’t want body parts flying all over the place, do we?”
“Not unless they’re yours,” Nurse Walling threw in under her breath as she began to dress the John Doe’s wounds.
Potts opened his mouth to speak, but Kyler had already started moving him through the door.
“Thanks, Colonel. Now I see why this island runs so smoothly.”
Kyler’s flattery had worked. He knew that flattery grabs a megalomaniac by the balls. He shut the door on the colonel whose chest had swelled to even larger proportions. At that moment, it almost looked like he had a neck.
Kyler stepped back over to the patient and watched silently for a moment as Nurse Walling cleaned away more burned skin.
“What’s between you and Colonel Potts?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” the nurse asked back, not looking up from her patient.
“What do you mean…what do I mean? You know good and well what I mean. In my short time as a doctor, I’ve never seen a nurse go at it with anyone like that before.”
“There’s a history there, Doctor.”
“Well…duh!”
Kyler waited for her to tell him the history of why two people hated each other so much, but instead, she continued to dress the patience wounds in silence.
CHAPTER 4
Samantha Gould watched as her husband stabbed his steak in a manner that would’ve made Jack the Ripper beam with fatherly pride. She wanted to wretch. She’d given up meat a year earlier and prided herself in being a strict vegetarian. She was a model and at five ten, she needed to stay in that one hundred five to one hundred and ten pounds range. She had done a nude layout for PETA after her Hollywood friends had shown her how the animals were killed and prepared.
“No more meat!” she had sworn. “Ever!”
Not so Jack Boots, known as Gringo to his friends. Where Samantha was long and leggy, Gringo was short, stocky and as hairy as an ape that had really let itself go. People couldn’t understand how they had gotten together in the first place, much less how they had stayed together after her modeling career had started to take off. She was on page eight in the upcoming July issue of Vogue and from what the photographer had told her, looking amazingly hot in her Calvin Klein pink nightie holding a bottle of Summer’s Eve. She had made good money on that one and had wanted to invest it into something
smart like a bank account or an IRA, but Gringo had other ideas. He had spent half of it on yet another horse that couldn’t run out of sight in a month but was a dead cert, and spent most of the other half of it on a single game of stud poker. He fancied himself a great poker player and entered a winner take all poker tournament where he had been the first player to exit the game.
“They cheated,” he had told her through clenched teeth. “I don’t know how, but I know they did.”
“Sure, they did,” she had told him dejectedly. He had pissed everything away on a pair of nines.
So here they were on No Name Island just as a hurricane was about to hit. Gringo had somehow convinced Penthouse Magazine that a nude layout on a small military island would be a big seller. After much haggling with the army, Gringo convinced the higher ups that a shoot on a military base would be good for morale.
The first shot of the day had been on the south beach. Gringo and photographer Sylvia Morrison had scouted around for the most secluded spot they could find. When they had found the perfect spot, they had laid down a beach blanket for Samantha to pose on. They had not seen a person for hours when Samantha dropped her robe and stretched across the blanket. The wind was perfect for the windblown hair look, but the air was cool and Samantha’s goose bumps were getting larger by the second. As the elderly, emphysemic photographer relaxed her with Photographer Cooing, that way all great camera people have of making their models relax, Samantha noticed that Gringo was standing next to her moving his right hand to the left and then to the right a few times before finally giving the okay sign. Samantha had assumed he had been trying to center her for Sylvia but generally in the modeling business, the cameraperson themselves will tell the model where to move and not the husband.
After forty-five minutes of shooting Samantha on the blanket in various poses, she heard noises. It sounded like someone snoring backwards. Not one but several people snoring backwards. Finally, she turned around to find a dingy full of soldiers in the water behind her smiling. The backward snoring sounds had been the men suppressing their giggles by putting their hands over their mouths. Gringo had wanted them in the shot but figured that Samantha would be too embarrassed to do it willingly so he secretly posed the boat full of soldiers in the water behind her, each and every one them standing, in every possible way, erect. They looked like giggling schoolboys looking at their first centerfold.