Godschild Covenant: Return of Nibiru

by Marshall Masters

  She lifted her head and squinted at the reddish sunlight that now filled the canteen and mumbled. “Oh, shit. Did we miss our flight?"

  “No, ma'am. We lost some time with a mechanical problem, but that's OK now, and we'll be leaving for Los Gatos in about 15 minutes.” He slid the tray between Ann-Marie and Ramona. “I brought you some coffee and what they have the nerve to call donuts. Unless you want to crack a tooth, I suggest you dunk them donuts real careful like."

  “Gee, thanks; that's really sweet of you. And thanks for finding us."

  “I'm glad we did,” he replied as a sudden thought came to his weary mind. “Say, are you one of the nurses who works with the ELMO at Los Gatos?"

  “As a matter of fact, I am. My name is Ann-Marie and I'm the hospice nurse at Los Gatos. Captain Anthony Jarman is my boss."

  “Well, then, I'm really glad we found you, ma'am and I'm real sorry about all the delays. I'll get you there as quick as I can. It's the least I can do for you, considering how you folks took such kind care of my friend, Eddy Rogers."

  “Eddy Rogers.” She shook her head. “Sounds familiar but I can't place it."

  “He was doing a test flight with his mechanic when he lost his tail rotor and augured in. The mechanic died on impact, but Eddy lived, even though he was burned real bad."

  “Oh yes,” she replied sadly. “The young helicopter pilot with major 3rd degree burns. He came in the first day we opened the center. Oh, gosh, I'm sorry; he was such a fine, young man. I felt so sorry for him."

  “All the guys in my unit know you did, Nurse Bournelle, but we didn't know your name till now. We're glad there was someone like you to be there with him at the end."

  Warmed by his sincerity she replied, “I want you to know he had a friendly smile on his face right up to the end."

  “That was Eddy sure enough. Fearless and fun.” The helicopter pilot's head drooped as he recalled the memories of his old flying buddy.” Finally, he looked up and said, “Like I said, them donuts are tooth breakers so don't forget to dunk. If you feel like going back to sleep, don't worry. We're not leaving without you. We'll be sure to come and get you before we start the preflight.” With that, he thankfully patted her on the hand and joined his crew at the other table.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Ann-Marie said as she nudged Ramona. Baker groaned and sat upright, rubbing the left side of her head. “Ouch, I still feel like some little shit with a hammer has been whacking at my head.” She opened her eyes, to see Ann-Marie's outstretched hand holding a steaming hot mug of coffee. “Hold that, dear, but first I gotta pee."

  * * * *

  THE PREFLIGHT HAD gone smoothly enough; the Black Hawk pilot began running through their checklist as his crew chief made sure Ann-Marie and Ramona were properly buckled in. As the fuel pumps and avionics whirred up to life, Ann-Marie and Ramona checked the intercoms in their flight helmets.

  Ramona tapped on Ann-Marie's helmet. “I can hear you, but why can't you hear me.” Ann-Marie held up the PTT switch on her old style flight helmet.

  “You got to push this button when you want to speak,” she answered. The pilots could hear them but paid no attention to their chatter as they started the turbine engines.

  In a few moments, the Black Hawk lifted up a few feet off the helipad and followed the taxiway out to the main active runway. At Lawrence, all aircraft took off from the active runway.

  The tower cleared them for takeoff, and the pilot dipped the nose helicopter forward as it climbed forward and up from the runway, turning towards the San Francisco Bay Area with a slow, graceful turn.

  As they passed over Fremont at the southernmost tip of the San Francisco bay, they could see the wrecked remains of the San Francisco Bay Area. The top of the bay waters were still smeared with patches of oils and chemicals, topped by a foul-looking yellow and brown foam. It would be years before all of it would finally disappear.

  There were a considerable number of trucks slowly making their way along the Dumbarton Bridge on Highway 84, spanning the short distance across the bay between San Mateo and Alameda County. It had been the only bridge to survive the tsunami in repairable condition. As to the other Bay Area bridges, like the Bay and Golden Gate, they had been totally destroyed, and replacing them would also take years—if it would ever be done.

  Turning to the sound, they flew over the flooded devastation that had once been the Silicon Valley boomtown of Santa Clara; they passed over San Jose on their approach to Los Gatos. Ann-Marie, who had seen it before, gave Ramona a running description of the sights.

  “Ladies, we're about five minutes out from Los Gatos,” the pilot announced over the intercom.

  “Thanks,” Ann-Marie replied. “By the way, when you get to the center, could you circle the reservoir a few times while I describe things to my friend here?"

  The pilot checked his fuel gauge and replied, “I can give you one long, slow clearing turn over the reservoir and go a bit north over the quarry and the old college. Will that do?"

  “You're a peach,” Ann-Marie answered. “Could you bring us in over I17 south from San Jose? I want to show her everything beginning with the Los Gatos checkpoint north of the center."

  “You got it. And we'll be listening in, so how about telling us something about the people too. I'll fly extra slow to make sure you have the time."

  “That works for me,” Ramona agreed.

  A few minutes later, the Black Hawk was flying directly south and just to the right of Highway 17. The freeway that had once connected the Silicon Valley with the coastal cities of Santa Cruz County to the south, and several large portions of it south of the Lexington reservoir had been destroyed during the quake, leaving the smaller Highway 9 as the only serviceable road.

  Pointing out the left side of the helicopter Ann-Marie said, “Over there is the Los Gatos checkpoint. The center is 3 miles south of that, just on the other side of those hills ahead of us, and nobody goes south from here without passing through the checkpoint."

  She then pointed Ramona's attention to a line of trucks moving north along the highway towards the checkpoint. “All those trucks you see heading north are returning from the Sierra Azul quarry. A part of it has been converted into a mass grave for the whole South Bay Area now. They mostly bury the unclaimed bodies there. Collection centers and morgues in the Bay Area collect the bodies around four in the morning. After that, they tag and bag them and then truck them in, starting an hour or so after sunrise—0600 when the quarry opens. Thankfully they use electrics now, but the sound of their tires will wake you up for a while."

  The pilot flew the Black Hawk down to an altitude of 1000 feet as he entered the narrow entry pass into and through the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Lexington Reservoir.

  Just past Saint Joseph's hill and with the reservoir to their left, Ann-Marie continued. “We have two entrances to the camp, and the busiest one is on the north end, at the old boat ramp. All of those large tents there in the center of the reservoir bed are for the walking terminal as we call them, with non-communicable diseases.” She leaned towards the open door of the helicopter to point down. “That's ‘the creek’ as we call it, but it's actually the seismic fracture that emptied this reservoir. Don't go swimming in there unless you want to die. The sides tend to collapse and bury folk in mud and rock and we've already lost three patients to it. However, it does sound nice at night, and lots of the walking terminal like to lay out their blankets nearby, smoke a joint to ease their suffering and relax to the sounds of the water."

  “Medical marijuana?"

  “Yup, and its good stuff too. I know; I've tried some. We get a lot from the DEA but the best stuff comes from the pot farmers who've been growing that stuff for decades back up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Now its legal, and we're buying it from them by the bales. It works great and it's damn cheaper than sedatives too!"

  The crew chief pushed his PTT button and added, “May I remind you ladies that this is a non-smoking flight and that there ar
e smoke detectors in the lavatories.” That comment brought laughs from everyone in the Black Hawk.

  As the helicopter banked gently to the east, the administrative area between Banjo point and Miller point was directly north of them. Ann-Marie pointed, “See that dome on the south end of that cluster, that's your home. This is the administrative area with mess hall, store rooms etc. And of course, you can see the helipad on top of Banjo point."

  As the helicopter crossed a few hundred feet over the helipad, the mouth of the communicable disease wards nestled deep in the dry Limekiln Creek stream came into view. “Those ugly, miserable concrete buildings are the communicable disease wards. You don't want to go there; trust me. The place is lousy with the Three Gorges flu victims, and none of them make it out alive."

  Ramona pointed at two figures in HazMat suits walking towards the communicable disease wards with boxes stuffed with intravenous bags. “What's that?"

  “Those are the Jesuits,” Ann-Marie answered glumly. “They take care of the dying back in those wards. They're carrying saline dextrose I.V. bags with heroine. We only use the pharmaceutical grade stuff for children, the bed-ridden and the few recovering patients we happen to save. For the terminal ones, we use the street heroine the DEA gives us. It manages the coughing, which is really important, because 3G is an airborne virus. Plus, it keeps them manageable if you know what I mean."

  “Heroin,” Ramona said with disgust. “There are much better things we could use."

  “Hey, honey, those Pentagon hot shots and politicians at Walter Reed where you had your cushy PA post get the best drugs money can buy, but out here you're in the real world, what we've got plenty of is dying people and heroin. It is what it is. You better get used to it, and fast."

  The helicopter gained altitude as the noise from its engines intensified. “Over there is the quarry with the mass graves.” Everyone in the aircraft went silent as the aircraft passed over immense concrete lined open pits filled with bodies stacked like fire wood. Ramona watched with morbid fascination as workers removed the bodies from body bags so they could be reused, before laying them out in rows so they could be covered with quick lime and a layer of dirt.

  Past the quarry, they crossed over the Guadalupe College site. Most of the buildings had collapsed during the quakes and the campus grounds were now dotted with tents and domes. “This is the old college, where we send the recovering patients. Sometimes, Captain Jarman makes the healthy patients requesting assisted suicide stay there instead of the main area, when he thinks it will make them change their minds. That place was picked with great care. You can see the Silicon Valley from there, and the quarry with the mass graves is behind it, past a couple of hills. You could say it gives people, those with a chance to live, a new sense of direction."

  As they passed over the college, the pilot decided to swing to the north around the backside of Saint Joseph hill and back through the first Highway 17 pass through the Santa Cruz Mountains for a straight-in approach to the helipad. It gave Ann-Marie a chance to fill Ramona in on some people info.

  “You know, the fellow who manages that quarry is a nice fellow, and he's been a widower for three years now. They used to mine aggregate rock in that quarry before it was turned into a burial pit, and he and his crew stayed on to keep it working. He's not much older than you, handsome in a rough kind of way, and he could do with a visit from a friendly face now and again."

  “Is that a hint?"

  “Kinda, I guess. Ah heck, I just think he's a great guy and he could use a little friendship.” The rest of the helicopter crew chuckled, keeping their fingers off their PTT buttons.

  “So what's his name, Madam Kinda?"

  “Dodge Murphy."

  “I'll keep it in mind, but don't go playing matchmaker on me. In the meantime, you haven't said a word about your boss, Anthony Jarman."

  Ann-Marie grimaced. As the helicopter had made its initial approach, she saw Anthony walking out to the first trench where a number of clients had already lined up trench-side, kneeling and waiting for the kindly placed bullet that would end their suffering. Ramona had been preoccupied with the administrative area and hadn't noticed.

  This time, as the Black Hawk made its way back over the spillway on the north side of the reservoir, Anthony would be getting ready to shoot the first or second client in the back of the head. Well, she reasoned, why shouldn't Ramona see it now as opposed to later?

  Finishing their clearing turn, the pilots guided the helicopter over the spillway as Ann-Marie looked down on the series of deep trenches dug in the ground behind a huge earthen bearm from her side of the helicopter. At ten feet tall, the bearm surrounded the trenches in a racetrack fashion; hiding them from the other parts of the center, save for the triage area directly above it. Each trench was approximately 50 feet long, 12 feet deep and 10 feet wide. The side closest to the main area of the camp had a sheer face while the other side was angled towards the top.

  She pulled on Ramona's arm and pointed downwards. “See over there—that small group of people gathered together just inside the bearm. They're receiving their last rites from Father Michael Bennett. He's the head of the Jesuit mission here. He and his volunteer caregivers, mostly lay people from local churches, work in the communicable wards. He and Anthony work closely together, and he is there every day giving folks who want it their last rites and comforting those not of his faith."

  “Seems like an odd couple,” Ramona commented.

  “Well, these are odd days, and he and Anthony share a dome and a strong friendship. They mostly like to get drunk together and argue about sports and movies. God, the racket they can make when they start in with those drinking songs the Father likes. By the way, we call him our ‘Spiritual Wombler,’ but you'll have to ask him what it means. Kind of an unwritten initiation rule now, if you know what I mean."

  “Well I'm a Jack Baptist, if you know what I mean,” Ramona replied.

  “Hey, you'd like him. We all adore the guy, and not a one of us envies the work he's doing. You'll feel the same real soon. Trust me on that."

  At that moment, Ann-Marie watched Anthony walk up to the first person kneeling at the mouth of the trench. Behind him was his aide, Private First Class Charlie Gibbs with what looked like the hand carried trays used by vendors at ball games, with a padded leather strap that wrapped around his neck and extended to the sides of the tray. On it were several small caliber pistols, tools and a few boxes of ammunition.

  Talking to the pilot, Ann-Marie asked, “Can you slow down or maybe hover here for a bit? You all might as well see this for yourselves."

  “Sure, we can do that,” the pilot replied. As the helicopter slowed to a hover, all eyes turned on Anthony Jarman and the woman kneeling at the edge of the trench.

  They watched in silence as he put his left hand on her shoulder and brought the muzzle of his Ruger Mark II pistol to the back of her neck. A moment later, she lowered her chin to her chest.

  Every soul in the helicopter drew a breath and watched as the woman's head was jerked backwards by a high velocity .22 bullet that tore through the back of her head at the base of her skull, boring through the top of her brain stem, ricocheting off the thick skull plate of her forehead and ripping through the two hemispheres of her brain as it spent its force.

  Jarman then let go of the woman's shoulder letting her limp body fall forward into the trench of its own weight, landing face down in an unattractive sprawl.

  As Jarman moved towards the next person kneeling at the trench, the pilot dipped the nose of the helicopter and proceeded slowly on his original path to the Los Gatos helipad. One had been enough, and it was the kind of sight they all knew they'd see in their dreams for years to come.

  Ann-Marie broke the silence. “Most of the people who walk into this camp see this happening and know it will happen to them. Yet, they come, and they love and pity Captain Jarman in a strange way that makes sense once you get over the horror of it all."

  “Why
is that,” the co-pilot asked, adding his voice to the conversation for the first time.

  “They love him for bringing a swift, merciful end to their hopeless, painful existence, and they pity him as a man of such compassion that he can repeat this ritual of death a hundred times a day without losing his sensitivity."

  As the Black Hawk settled down on the landing pad, Ramona patted the FedEx package under her jacket just to reassure herself, for the umpteenth time, that she hadn't lost it.

  She also wished to God that she was still in her cushy job back at Walter Reed, where she used to dream about doing something more important than tending to the pampered egos of politicians with hemorrhoids, gout and the other such common maladies. Her mouth was dry as a bone as she now began to feel like a naove fool. She was in a world of hurt now, and while she was never one to back down from a challenge, nobody could have ever prepared her for the world she was now about to enter. From this point forward, her life would never be the same, and the thought of it made her pulse throb and her chest tighten.

  * * * *

  THE THREE WEEKS since her arrival at the Los Gatos Triage Center had passed like nightmarish eternity to Lieutenant Ramona Baker. The day after her arrival, Chief Medical Officer Major Jim Boole had assigned her to triage screening at the old boat launch on the northern edge of the old reservoir. As a competent physician assistant, she could replace one of his regular physicians for other duty.

  During the last week, the number of new Three Gorges cases had risen dramatically, and a heavy stream of sick people was showing up each day at the triage area where she worked. Worse yet, the job of deciding who would live and who would die was becoming a grimmer task, since the 3G viruses had just mutated into an even deadlier variant.

  She had been on her feet all morning and was tired of breathing through her respirator and the uncomfortable feeling of her light HazMat jumper suit and face shield when Lieutenant Colonel Tanya Wheelwright drove up to the base of the boat ramp at a safe enough distance in her electric cart and signaled for her to get in. Ramona left the triage line after finding a replacement. After stripping her protective clothing off and throwing it into a disposable bin, she plopped down on the seat next to Tanya.