by Tim Curran
“Shit, Sarge, Hopper rammed right into us, wasn’t our fault,” Jones said.
“Hell I did.”
“All right, all right, girls,” Oates said. “Quit blaming the wreck on the train. Jones? You get this one. Tie off your craft and search that house. You find any beauticians in there, you tell ‘em Hinks here could use an avocado facial and a finger-wave.”
The guardsmen were all wearing their fatigues with rubber hip boots and rain ponchos. They had their M-16s, too, but Oates forbid them from loading those lifetakers. With this bunch, he figured that would be like giving a blind man a chainsaw in a crowded room. He was the only one with a loaded weapon and that’s how it had to be with these monkeys.
Jones tied off the boat with a mooring line made out of nylon rope looped through the bow D-ring. He tied it off on the porch railing. Strickland and Chernick followed him through the slop and up onto the porch.
“Water smells like shit,” Strickland said.
“Then it must remind you of sex with your boyfriend,” Oates told him. “Now get humping.”
Jones went through the usual protocol of knocking on the door, then he just went in, the door partly ajar. It took the three of them to push it open all the way. Then they disappeared inside. Oates could see their flashlight beams bobbing around in there through the windows, hear them calling out and identifying themselves. At least they hadn’t forgotten to do that.
And the waiting began. A minute, then two that bled into five.
14
“How long is this gonna take ‘em?” Neiderhauser said.
Oates turned and looked at him. “You on the rag tonight, corporal? Heavy flow day or what? You wanna change your fucking tampon, we’ll turn our backs.”
Hinks laughed.
Neiderhauser sighed. “I’m just saying, Sarge, that we’ve got a lot of real estate to cover here. We need to do it as quick as we can.”
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of fucking rum, Neiderhauser, that’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said all day. We’re gonna do it as fast as we can, but we can’t take the chance of leaving someone behind.”
There was some splashing and a few muted giggles. Strickland and Chernick came out the door and down the steps, laughing about the fact that they’d found some floating fuckbooks and a bright red dildo that Chernick had originally taken to be some kind exotic flashlight.
“Where’s Jones?” Oates wanted to know.
“He’s taking a piss, sir,” Strickland said.
“In the house? Well, goodness gracious great balls of fire! Jones! Jones!” Oates called out. “You zip that inchworm up and get your ass out here! I told you knuckleheads not to separate! Get out here!”
Jones showed.
Oates sang, “Well along came Jones, slow-walking Jones.”
“Just taking a leak, Sarge.”
“In somebody’s house?”
“Well, you heard the captain. Sewers are all backed-up, you got sewage everywhere.”
“I don’t give a shit, Jones. You don’t pull that Wee Willy Winkie of yours unless I say so. Got it?”
Jones nodded. “My girlfriend don’t think it’s so wee, Sarge.”
“I don’t care what your sister says. She’s not here. Out here, I’m your fucking daddy and I call the shots. You got that? Do you all read me on this?” Oates said, his eyes surveying the sorry lot under him. “You boys get on my wrong side here and I swear you’re all gonna come out of this with sore assholes and that not-so-fresh feeling! Just because we ain’t got the Vietnamese Boy’s Choir popping out of the bush with AKs and ugly attitudes, don’t mean there’s not danger here, comprende? You boys do what I say and nobody’s gonna get hurt, you don’t and you’ll be chewing my shit fresh from the oven and liking the taste! Any questions? Good, now let’s move out, you fucking assholes.”
Jones untied the boat and they moved back out into the streets.
Oates didn’t respect these boys, but he sure as hell didn’t want anything to happen to them. They were just ordinary kids for the most part playing soldier. They meant well and he knew it. And even if he wouldn’t admit it, he liked them. Not as soldiers, but as the kids they were. No, he did not respect them. But just because you didn’t respect a puppy that shit on your new carpet didn’t mean you didn’t love that leg-humping little sonofabitch.
And Oates was thinking this because he was starting to worry.
He’d been in Desert Storm and Panama, pulled a tour in El Salvador and another in the meat-grinder of Beirut back in the ‘80’s. So he understood danger, he understood threat. And right then he was feeling like the squad was not alone out in those inundated streets, that there were others out there. Others not showing themselves and he did not like it. It was the same sort of feeling, he knew, that you could get out in the jungle knowing there were unfriendlies out there and that one of them was sighting you in his crosshairs. It was not something your brain told you, but something you felt down in the bottom of your guts like an especially cold finger had been shoved up your ass and was wiggling around down there.
Oates could not explain what he felt. It was instinctive, intuitive, and he had learned to trust such things.
When they got to a submerged ballfieldthe tops of the dugouts just barely visible, Port-a-potties floating around like empty coffins and bumping up against the wire-mesh behind the catcher’s cageOates brought them to a stop in that slimy water.
“Okay, boys,” he said. “I want you all to lock and load. I want magazines in all weapons and I want all safeties engaged until I say different.”
Most of them were ecstatic over the idea, but Hinks said, “You want us to load up? With bullets?”
Oates just shook is head. “Sometimes, Hinks, it’s hard to be your woman. Yes, with bullets.”
“But why?”
“Because those are the regulations according to Henry T. Oates, your resident daddy. Now do what I tell you.”
Dammit, see what you got me into, Angela?
Oates blamed Angela for most things, but never to her face. Because Angela Oates might have weighed a 110 pounds soaking wet and been pretty as a prom queen, but she was the hardest bullbuster a man was likely to meet. And maybe that’s why Oates had married her. Weren’t many that could put him in his place. He loved her and would happily admit as such. But after ten years as an Army wife, she wanted to come back home and Oates was forced to finish his career in the Guard in order to get his retirement. Something he wasn’t crazy about, but did for Angela strictly out of love. And love was a hard master. Because when Oates’ dick had met Angela it had been happy and that’s how Oates knew the rest of him never would be again. Such was love…and hormones.
The soldiers busied themselves inserting magazines and about the time they’d finished and were scanning the grainy darkness with the barrels of their rifles like kids sighting in hostile Indians with tree branches, Liss in the rear boat cried out and fired his rifle. He got off one three-round burst into the night that got everyone agitated and ready to start capping.
But Oates was on top of it. “Who fired that weapon? Who fired that motherfucking weapon and by whose goddamn orders! I said, WHO FIRED THAT MOTHERFUCKING WEAPON?”
If anyone else was thinking of following suit, their trigger fingers went limp as noodles. The sound of the M-16 spitting slugs had been loud in the stillness, hell yes, but it was a whisper compared to the booming of the first sergeant’s mouth as the profanities echoed off into the darkness of River Town like cluster bombs striking a target.
“It was Liss,” Torrio said.
“Liss?” Oates turned in the direction of him. He was sitting in the stern of the rear boat with his 16 cradled in his arms. In the glow of the running lights his face looked pinched-up like somebody trying to hold back a scream. “Was that you, Liss? Liss? You answer me, you little cocksucker!”
“Sir…yes sir,” Liss breathed. “I saw someone…I just…I just shot at them.”
“Get those se
archlights out there,” Oates said.
Using paddles, the boats were brought around, searchlights panned in the direction Liss had shot. There was nothing out there, just wet leaves and floating garbage, a Styrofoam cooler and a sheet of old plywood.
“What in the hell were you thinking, you fucking moron?” Oates wanted to know. “We’re here to save people not kill them. Jesus H. Christ. Anything out there? Anything at all?”
“Not unless they sank,” Neiderhauser said.
Oates knew more than he was saying. He hadn’t been in the soldiering business as long as he had without being able to sense things. And the vibes blowing off Liss were bad. If he had seen someone, then it would have taken a particular set of circumstances to make him fire. Oates had seen guys his age in Saudi who couldn’t even pull the trigger when some fanatic was charging their APC with a belt full of explosives. So, unless his guess was wrong, Liss had seen something that had truly disturbed him.
They made a grid search of the area using just the oars to swing the boats around. They didn’t find a thing. Oates had pushed aside a mass of leaves to see the water beneath, but it was simply black as the run-off from a transmission. A few bubbles broke the surface, nothing more.
“All right, Liss, I’m guessing you imagined things,” Oates said, trying to remain calm. “But you don’t have the nerve for this, so eject that magazine from your weapon.”
He didn’t seem able, so Hopper did it for him.
Liss just sat there shaking with a pained look on his face like he needed to take a good shit and some monkey had sewn up his rectum as a joke. Whatever was laying down low and simmering in his bowels, it was creeping right up now and filling him. And it was not good. Not good at all.
“I saw someone,” he maintained. “Someone…someone funny.”
Oates spat over the side of the boat. “Funny? Funny like Bozo or Clarabelle? Or Wiggles the Pants-less Clown exposing himself at the pocket park? C’mon, Liss, I think we can all use a good laugh right now. See, I almost made a funny, too. When you capped those rounds, I almost blew mud in my fatigue pants and you jokers would have gotten a few good chuckles off that until I started shaking my shorts out on your heads. So, tell me about this funny individual.”
Liss looked like he was trying to swallow down something that just wouldn’t stay put. “Just funny…weird…strange, I don’t know.”
But Oates didn’t believe that. Liss knew, all right.
“C’mon, Liss, spill it. Funny/weird/strange how? Was it a man or a woman? Were they juggling balls or waving an Israeli flag or dressed up like one of the Village People?”
Liss shook his head. “I don’t know…I think it was a man…but…but his face was all white and blobby, Sarge…looked like it was melting off the skull underneath.”
Well, that landed pretty hard. There were a few angry dismissals of it, then just a lot of silence. Oates told Liss they needed more than that and Liss just repeated what he said. That when he’d shot, he didn’t know if he hit them. Only that they went under.
“Like…like they just sank, Sarge,” Liss managed. “Like they were…like a window dummy or something. Not real.”
“All right, let’s get the hell out of here,” Oates said. “But before we go, no goddamn shooting. You understand me, you idiots? Because if you kill someone, not only will you be screwed but also yours truly as your squad leader. And that’s not going to happen to me, you little dickwads. So understand what I now say: If there’s any fucking to happen, I’ll be the horny fucker and you squirts will be the happy fuckees! Understand? You will now do as I say or I will dump your asses overboard! If I say bend over, grab your ankles and grin, boney-maroney, and maybe if I like you I’ll use Vaseline and if I don’t I’ll dryfuck you like a one-nutted hound humping a gopher hole! Do we understand each other, gentlemen, good and good. Now let’s move out.”
The pump jets were started again and the boats moved off further into the desertion of River Town. And the further they went, the more Oates was getting that feeling that he did not like. He had been on some battlefields in his time, but nothing like this. River Town was a graveyard and there were no two ways about that. All the buildings and houses rising from the murk were like monoliths and dead trees rising up from a misting, poisoned lake. A light rain had begun to fall from the scarred clouds overhead. Now and again, they would catch of glimpse of motion just out of the illumination of the lights and that was what was really worrying Oates.
That and what Liss had claimed to have seen.
15
“This is just getting weird,” Neiderhauser said, maybe feeling it, too.
“There’s worse duty than this,” Oates told him, though he did not think there honestly was. “You boys could be going up to that prison to put down the riot, but instead you’re getting a nice boating trip.”
Ahead, some trees had fallen over the road creating a deadfall that was impassable. The branches and limbs were interwoven like a mesh of reed. As the lights splashed over them, Oates was certain there were people hiding in there, shadows moving in the shadows.
“Okay!” he called out. “Let’s try down that alley!”
The boats banked to the right and slid down an alley between two warehouses. Even the wan glow of the sporadic streetlights and the filtered moonlight did not reach here. The searchlights washed over those high brick walls, splashing them with the gigantic, distorted images of the men in the boats. Ahead, nothing but a clogged sluice of dark water, cast-off branches, and leaves.
But then something else.
“What…what the hell is that?” Hinks said.
But Oates wasn’t sure until they got up real close. Elongated, bobbing shapes in the water covered with silt and dead leaves. The boats moved into their midst slowly, bumping them aside. And after the first and then the second did a slow dead man’s roll, exposing white underbellies to the sky, there was no doubt.
“Bodies,” Neiderhauser said. “Fucking bodies. Just like I told you.”
The cadavers were buried in leaves, but there had to be nearly a dozen humped shapes floating around them. As the bows disinterred them, the hot-sweet stench of bacterial decay started bringing stomachs into throats. The smell hung in the alley like a gaseous envelope.
“Just keep your nerve,” Oates told them. “They’re dead; they can’t hurt you.”
Rain was flying thick as snow in the beams of the searchlights now and the wind, so long absent, was picking up, beginning to howl along the roofs and eaves of the deserted buildings as if it were blowing through a subterranean catacomb. You could almost imagine it skirting shattered crypts and blowing through the empty eye sockets of heaped skulls. It whipped and moaned, making rainspouts rattle and loose signboards creak. And the boats kept chugging along, the stink of overturning bodies simply green and nauseating. They kept thudding into bows and scraping along the neoprene hulls like they were moving, dragging splintered fingernails along the sides.
“Well, Peter Piper poked a peck of pickled peckers,” Oates said under his breath. “What have we gotten ourselves into now?”
The guardsmen were bitching and complaining and a few were just gasping and sobbing.
You cry your eyes out and throw your guts out, Oates thought at them. Get it out of your systems: you get used to the bodies, you might turn into soldiers yet.
The alley was long and winding with lots of hard turns and Oates figured it must have been very old, the buildings and the alley part of some nineteenth century industrial area. Not only just the bodies, but floating planks and soaking cardboard boxes and empty drums. Lots of things poking from the mire. High overhead, there were boarded-up windows and others that had simply been bricked over, ancient hooded loading docks and rotting timbers poking out with rusting winches that must have been part of some pulley system for loading freight. They moved around a panel truck that was sunk to the top of its cab and a series of decrepit loading bays off to the right. And that’s another reason that Oate
s knew this area was oldthere was no possibly way a modern truck or tractor-trailer rig could have backed into those bays in the tight confines of the alley. These were from the days of draft horses and wagons.
“It’s like we’re being drawn into a trap,” Neiderhauser said.
Oates wanted to slap him, but he didn’t. He had to get control of this situation one way or another. His command was disintegrating around him.
“I been thinking the same thing,” Hinks said.
“Thinking, eh? Well, I thought I heard a few marbles rattling around in a coffee can. We’ll be out of this alley in no time. You pussies want to hold hands, feel free. But no heavy petting, just like the sign says.” Oates was trying to sound tough, trying to get them feeling confident again. “Sure as shit, Hinks, we’ll be out of here anytime now. We’ll be out of here and cleaner than a country lane after a spring shower…or however that douche commercial goes.”
Hinks tried to laugh, but it just wasn’t happening.
The atmosphere was just going bad. Like opening up a corpse, the farther you went in, the more it stank. Oates was thinking that was applicable, because this place not only smelled like a morgue, it felt like one. It was like they were digging their way into a black grave shovelful by shovelful, pawing deeper into that wormy soil, just waiting for their spades to scrape against the lid of the coffin beneath. And when they did, when they did and that box started opening
“What was that?” Neiderhauser said.
“What?”
It came again and Oates heard it this time, too. A thudding sound beneath like something had bumped the bottom of the boat and then bumped it again.
Oates swallowed, his brain filled with clutching, evil shadows. “We…we bumped into something. Christ, Neiderhumper, you don’t have to be born a coal miner’s daughter to figure that one.”
But even as he said it, a cold trickle of fear ran down his spine. And it really started to run when it happened again. Something struck the keel with force and the boat rocked, then rocked again. There were shouts and cries from the other two boats now. Either they were hitting something or something was hitting them. Oates badly wanted to cut the order to open those craft up, but that alley was too tight. Last thing he needed was for one of the Zodiacs to strike something and flip over. These goddamn idiots probably couldn’t even swim.