“Juice would be great, and if you happen to have anything to eat…I missed chow.”
Forman slid a tin of shortbread cookies off a shelf near her feet, opening it and setting it on the desk within reach, then pulled out a cold can of orange juice for Jill, a coffee cup for herself.
“You have the look of someone with a lot on her mind.”
Jill stuffed two cookies into her mouth, drank the juice in one pull. She gazed at Forman from under lowered eyebrows. “You don’t know the tenth of it. But before I go on…how confidential is this conversation?”
“As confidential as you want it to be.”
“And what if I told you I had done something unlawful? Would you stick to that?”
Forman sat back, blowing on her hot coffee, contemplating. “Are we talking capital crimes here?” She smiled, obviously only half joking.
Jill stared, intent. “I don’t think so. Mostly just Article 92.”
“Failure to obey a lawful order. I can tell you then with ironclad certainty that my lips are sealed.” She took a drink of her coffee, made a face. “It’s this ship’s water. I ran out of bottled a while back.”
Repeth took a deep breath. “All right. I choose to trust you.” A pause. “I am not assigned to this ship.”
Forman’s eyebrows flew up in surprise, and she sat forward, putting her chin on her fist. “Really? That’s a new one, not that my military career is particularly long or distinguished. Do tell.” Her eyes sparked with the cheeky joy of shared secrets.
Jill shook her head angrily. “Ma’am…six hours ago I was looking at this LPD from the railing of that cruise ship you have under quarantine. I just swam twelve miles, I’m hungry, and I’m not in the mood for casual conversation. And there is no disease aboard that ship. At least, nothing…nothing bad.”
Forman opened her hand to drum her fingers on her own cheek, staring into Jill’s eyes, as if seeking truth. “Dear me. Dear me. Sergeant, I never thought to say this, but I am at a loss. What do you want me to do?”
“Ma’am...I haven’t a clue. But I’m exhausted. I need food and rest, and I’m holding my head up by sheer willpower. Is there somewhere…”
“On a ship? We both know that every space is spoken for. You might be able to join the crew as a transfer in and get away with it for a few days…”
“Just let me eat and sleep, then I’ll be able to think straight. Please?”
Forman thought for a moment. “Take my cabin.” She gestured to a door in the back of the tiny office. “No one will disturb you. I can sleep in my chair if need be. I’ll go get some food to go from the mess.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Jill stumbled to the cabin’s bunk, falling asleep as her head hit the pillow.
The wolverine in her guts woke her up. Faint light from the open office door illuminated food cartons next to the bunk. She wolfed down their contents – sandwiches, fruit, potato chips, milk – then rolled over and went back to sleep.
A long black time later, a giant club struck the ship like a gong, throwing her out of her bunk and onto the deck. She yelped as the impact twisted her wrist, then again as she put her weight on the prostheses. She gave up and went back to one hand and two knees, crawling along the heaving deck to the doorway.
Chaplain Forman was sitting on the deck as well, holding her head. She would have a nasty shiner soon, above her right eye. The two women stared at each other, and then Forman clawed her way to her seat behind the desk as the PA came to life.
“Now hear this, now hear this. General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands General Quarters. Condition Zebra.” They felt the ship get under weigh, the sound of the screws churning at flank speed, maximum revolutions.
“I have to go to my station in the infirmary. You stay here!” Forman pointed severely at Repeth with an emphasizing finger.
An hour of sweat later the chaplain returned, teeth clenched. “The scuttlebutt is your cruise ship just exploded. Lost with all souls. One of the corpsmen said they saw streaks of light from the sky, then it just vanished in a fireball. Someone should be court-martialed – the Ingraham was a lot closer than we were, and has been gravely damaged. Their wounded are being medevacked to us. I have to get right back.”
“You know what this means, don’t you, ma’am?”
“It means the US government just murdered three thousand innocent people because they thought they were sick. They must have been extremely frightened to do something like that. Though perhaps they have a right to be. Terrorists just detonated two nuclear weapons on US soil: one in Los Angeles, another in West Virginia.”
Sergeant Repeth gaped in shock. “Los Angeles? What the hell is going on? Just what…” She trailed off, stunned.
“Something rotten in the state of Denmark, methinks. I have to go.”
Jill just raised a shaky palm as Forman left, not looking. She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes, damning her leaking tear ducts. Los Angeles. Her whole family was in Los Angeles, her parents and her little brother and uncles and cousins...
She waited as long as she could, until the ship secured from General Quarters and the watertight doors and hatches were allowed open and the ship slowed; they must have gotten word they were not under attack after all. She wondered why the two naval ships had not been told to move away before the attack on the cruise ship.
Her first concern was more information. She also needed more food, and to move the illicit gear she'd stashed back in the compartment. Angrily she shook her head, throwing the tears off, wiping her eyes with her sleeves. Stood up, gritting her teeth against the pain, and strode out into the passageway.
The ship was busy, sailors and Marines scurrying about with extreme sense of purpose. The amphibious well was filled with people, checking landing craft and gear, loading armored vehicles aboard the huge hovercraft, chaining them down to hardpoints on the decks. She saw live ammunition being hoisted into the tanks and personnel carriers.
The very busyness hid her, just one uniform among scores, hurrying about a task. She climbed the ladder to the compartment where she'd hid her gear, using mostly her upper body strength, and then struggled back down with the rucksack, everything stuffed inside it.
“Hey, let me give you a hand.” He was smiling, handsome, cheerful and dark. She saw Staff Sergeant’s stripes, and ‘Gaona’ printed on his nametag.
“No, I got it.” She grimly struggled on.
“Come on, Sergeant. You know, chivalry isn’t really dead.”
“With all due respect, Staff Sergeant, you can stow that shit where the sun don’t shine. I pull my weight.” At that moment, the jury-rigged prosthesis on her left leg failed her, twisting sideways under the pressure of walking down the ladder steps. She would have fallen had he not caught her, setting her gently on the deck, along with her rucksack.
He looked at her lower leg, then her face, then back again. “You should be screaming about now, so I’m going to guess that’s not your real leg. I mean, that’s…” Confusion showed on his face.
She bit back her embarrassment to growl, “It’s a prosthesis. I need to re-secure it. Just help me get out of everyone’s way.”
Accepting his support she hobbled a few yards on one leg to a spot against the bulkhead. Once there she pulled up her trouser cuffs and began redoing the bindings. “Thanks, Staff Sergeant. But you don’t have to do any more. I’m good.”
Pursing his lips he nodded, then shrugged as he pointedly read her name tag. “Okay, Sergeant Repeth. I’ll see you around.” His tone was playful.
She watched him walk away. Just as good-looking from this angle, and he knows it. Oh, Jill, give it a rest, not the time for the libido to act up. Funny, she’d been feeling friskier the last few days. Maybe it was from the…the whatever-it-was that was fixing her legs.
Boot and straps again secure, she stood back up and hefted the rucksack down the passageway toward the chaplain’s berth. After dropping that off, she made her way to the nearest mess. The galle
y crew was in full swing, and she loaded up on everything she could, demolished the whole tray, then did it again. She didn’t think she could get away with a third; one of the mess ratings had looked at her strangely the second time through. Fortified, she stumped down the passageways to the other enlisted mess and went through the line there too.
This time she could eat slowly enough to listen to the scuttlebutt. She chose a spot close to a group of sailors in uniforms somewhat crisper than average. She thought they were part of the CIC, the Combat Information Center, nerve center for operations aboard. Maybe they would know what was going on.
“The Old Man said it was a kinetic strike.”
“Kinetic strike of what?”
“Inert reentry vehicles. Like nukes but just made of metal.”
“No way that could have blasted that cruise ship like it did.”
“Dude, those things come in at fifteen thousand miles an hour. Mach 20. I ran the energy on my computer – it’s way enough. Like manmade meteors. I’m surprised it didn’t take Ingy with it.”
“It almost did, from what I hear. Two dozen dead and fifty wounded.”
“Somebody screwed up bad. They should have had her move away.”
“If they wanted it gone, why didn’t they just have us do it? With a missile or the guns or something?”
“Dunno, man, dunno. Maybe all them civilians on board. Glad I didn’t have to push that button.”
“Oh, yeah. That would suck. So where we going now?”
The sailors all stared at the questioner, a young junior enlisted rating, but no one spoke. Security prohibited talking about operational details, such as their destination, outside of secure spaces.
“Sorry.”
“That’s what I always tell them you are.”
“What?”
“You’re sorry.” The sailors laughed.
Jill finished her third tray. Replete at last, she went back and got a to-go carton for later.
When she slipped into Chaplain Forman’s office she found the older woman staring at her shipnet computer screen. “Come here,” the lieutenant said. She pointed at an open e-mail.
“All hands, pass this message. Sergeant Repeth report immediately to the Personnel Support Detachment.”
“Someone must have noticed you weren’t on the manifest.”
Jill growled. “Gaona.”
Forman looked a question.
“Just a nice guy that tried to help. Probably tried to look me up at Personnel and found out I wasn’t in the system. Now they’re trying to find me. There goes my anonymity. F– umm, freaking do-gooders. Sorry, ma’am.”
“I’ve heard salty language before, Sergeant. I’m sure Jesus did too.”
“Yeah, Jesus…ma’am – I need to get off this ship. I need to get to somewhere that I can plausibly rejoin from – I can say I missed the cruise – that I got drunk and got left behind in the Bahamas or something. Do you know where we’re headed?”
“Yes, and I think I know how to get you off the ship. We’re going to Norfolk to transfer the wounded ashore to Bethesda. That’s how you’ll go – as combat wounded.”
Jill looked at her doubtfully. “That seems pretty iffy. I don’t have any fresh wounds.”
“You’ll have a concussion. Disorientation, you can’t think straight. It will be the perfect cover. And I’ll attend the wounded. Nothing more natural. I’ll make sure you get left alone. Then, at Bethesda, you’ll disappear in the shuffle.”
“Ma’am…that sounds like it will work. Can I say, you’re the most…unusual chaplain I’ve ever run across?”
“Why, are most of them you have met cowards?”
“No, just more sticklers for the rules, I guess.”
“I never much liked rules. I didn’t like my father’s rules,” – she pronounced it ‘fahtha,’ the New England Brahmin coming out strongly through clenched teeth – “so I married a Navy man. After a while I found I didn’t like my husband’s rules much either - or his skirt-chasing - though I did keep his name after the divorce. Better than ‘Jenkins.’ But then I found God, or perhaps God found me, and I decided to go to seminary, be a chaplain. I still didn’t much like rules, so I made sure the only ones I respected were really His, not the ones that mankind had tacked on to the religion.”
“That…that makes a whole lot of sense, ma’am.”
“I’m glad you approve,” she said drily. “If we’re going to be co-conspirators, you might as well call me Christine.”
Jill squirmed. “Ah…I’m not really comfortable with that, ma’am.”
Forman’s tone turned ironic. “God forbid I trespass on the sanctity of Marine Corps sensibilities. Suit yourself. Just remember, I’m not a line officer, I’m a chaplain.”
“All right…Christine. Thank you.”
“You can thank me when you’re ashore and gone.”
“Ma’am…Christine, can you see if you can check on my family? They are in L.A…I’d like to know if they’re…how they are.”
The chaplain looked at Sergeant Repeth and swallowed a lump. “Sure, Jill. Just as soon as I can.”
Repeth sat back, some of the knot of worry finally unraveling. Like any good Marine, she hated being without a plan. Now she had one, or at least, half a one. After she got back to where she belonged…her mind shied away from the future. Some part of it knew she wouldn’t like it when it got here.
The next morning Forman dropped a sack on Jill’s bunk, waking her up. “Sit up, we need to give you a good wrap and disguise.” She opened the bag, pulling out gauze, bandages and a soft neck brace. Soon, Repeth was swaddled in enough of the material to hide her identity, save the last bit across her eyes.
“Did you find anything out about my family?”
“Jill, I’m sorry. Communications are swamped. There are half a million people dead in LA, and the authorities there are way behind the power curve. Here, eat this. It might be a while before I can feed you again.” The chaplain handed her a carton full of scrambled eggs, sausages and biscuits. While Jill was eating, Forman dumped the Marine’s rucksack and started making two piles. “You can’t get caught with anything incriminating. That means the scuba gear and anything with your name on it except your wallet. Shove that down your panties and tell anyone that asks you lost it in the attack, until you get clear. Where were you stationed, anyway?”
“Quantico.”
“Good, that’s just down the road from Bethesda. I assume that if you make it home you have uniforms and other gear?”
“Of course.”
“Very well. Let’s go, get those prostheses on.” The chaplain started to help, then stopped as she looked at the exposed stumps. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was new skin. Right there at the tan line. That’s very strange.”
Repeth licked her lips. “Uh…I didn’t tell you everything, because…because I’m not sure I even believe it myself.” She cleared her throat. “I think it is new skin. New skin and more, new everything. I think my legs are, uh, regrowing themselves.”
Christine sat down suddenly, reaching out a hand to gently touch the baby-pink nub. “That’s…that’s amazing.”
“Yes. I think it’s why they killed all those people. There were things like this happening all over the cruise ship. Blind people that could see. People with terminal cancer cured overnight. A paraplegic got up out of his wheelchair. And this. I guess regrowing – regeneration – takes a bit longer, but I think in a few weeks I’ll have new feet.” The younger woman’s eyes were pleading, begging the chaplain to let her have a chance at being a whole Marine and a whole person again.
“And that’s what they are trying to cover up. But why? You aren’t some kind of monster.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a secret worth killing for. It’s going to take smarter people than me to figure that out, I just know that I don’t want to be locked up in some lab.”
“You won’t be if I can help it. We stick to the plan. This doesn’t change anyth
ing. In fact I’m more sure now than I was before. Something big and rotten is going on, and I’m going to find out what. And fight it.”
They heard an announcement over the PA, calling for the patients to be prepped for medical air transportation to Bethesda National Military Medical Center. Hurriedly strapping Repeth’s prosthetics on, they walked carefully through the passageways to the auxiliary infirmary that had been set up in one of the cleared cargo holds. Ratings stepped out of the way as they saw the chaplain and the walking wounded Marine. The two slipped in among the hustle and bustle of the doctors, nurses and corpsmen, and got Jill horizontal on a cot as quickly as possible.
Forman fended off several helpful medical professionals, saying this one was fine, just combat stress and a lingering concussion. When asked for her name, she said, “Jane Doe. No ID, no dog tags, no memory. Bethesda can take her fingerprints and DNA and look her up in the system.”
Everyone was too busy prepping the patients to worry about it.
Several six-man teams of Marines carried patients to the cargo lifts, then up to the flight deck to be loaded onto MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors. Lieutenant Forman sweated and watched as they worked their way toward her and Sergeant Repeth, finally surrounding the cot and reaching for the lift points.
One man stopped short. “Hey, this is Sergeant Repeth, the one they were looking for.”
Forman saw the man’s name tag said ‘Gaona.’ Thanks, Murphy. Mind racing, she whipped him with her raised voice. “That’s right, Staff Sergeant. She’s concussed, she’s suffering from combat stress, and she’s in no condition to be bothered with you like last time. Now take charge of your detail and put your hands on that cot and lift, damn you, one, two, three, lift, and march your asses up to that aircraft or by God I will have your stripes – and you too, Corporal, don’t think I won’t, you men ought to be ashamed of yourselves, I should file charges for sexual harassment, for abuse under cover of authority. I thought Marines had more discipline than to be sniffing around a wounded female like horny butt-monkeys looking to hump everything in sight – h’ut, two, t’ree, fower, keep your eyes front you stinking pus-poxed son of a guttersnipe streetwalker or I swear I will have you locked up at attention in front of the Sergeant Major and he won’t be anywhere near as nice as I am…”
The Demon Plagues Page 4