“How could a biological agent be released everywhere, all at once?” Nishimura asked quietly, “Something like that, Homeland Security would tell us, They’d—”
“No, they wouldn’t! No one’s telling us anything!”
“Boatswain’s Mate Henstrom, you will address me as sir!”
Nishimura’s roar sounded like the glow had split his face open. For the first time, the glow felt like a glow, an ember that had caught flame and was engulfing him in fire. His lips, curdled by that heat, retracted from snarling teeth. The hiss he heard was the shocked intake of breath from the rest of the crew.
“And if you cut me off one more time, O-3, I will have the master of arms chief up here, and you will sail into the San Diego shipyard in a cellblock. Is that clear, Boatswain’s Mate?”
Henstrom, formerly as pale as everyone around him, went pink, then red, then kept going, past magenta into a deep, sweaty purple. His hands clenched into fists at his sides and his whole body bore down like a woman giving birth. The result was stillborn: silent fury with nowhere to go.
“Yes, sir,” Henstrom growled.
Nishimura turned away to hide what he feared was his own discoloration. First, he’d made a rare technical error. Second, even rarer, he’d raised his voice. What was wrong with him? Last night had been stormy and disrupted by some poor nugget’s bolting incident, but he’d slept fine. He always did. There was zero chance this was a nightmare or the result of sleep deprivation. He steadied himself on the spoked steering wheel and gazed at the deck. Aircraft were once again taxiing, their pilots unafraid of the storm.
He’d been assigned to the Stennis, CVN-74, when 9/11 happened, and would never forget the sensation of hurtling for the Arabian Sea, Instructions like that had to be coming soon. If Chuck Corso had it right, America was under attack, and Nishimura expected to see Captain Page rising from sick bay in this moment of need, appearing at the nav bridge door to bellow, Thirty knots!
It did not happen, though; it kept not happening. Without direction from Homeland Security, CINCPAC, Page, or Vo, Nishimura had no choice but to ride the rules, align with guidelines, and get those Nishimura Delays going. He cleared his throat. He did not like the crackle in his voice, but he spoke loudly for only the second time in his career. He had to, for his crew, for his country.
“Lang, eyes up—I want to see CTOLs out there, OK-3s and nothing but! Someone open a line to CATCC! Henstrom, to the lee—we want this flattop steady as she goes! What do you think, Quartermaster? Think you can rouse the OOD? Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’s just in the head, you think?”
Not bad, Nishimura thought. I sound pretty good.
He snapped up his binoculars to study the horizon, but what he saw in his mind’s eye was Larry’s face, the sadness his husband no longer hid when Nishimura set off on a deployment. His children’s faces came next, ranging from the anguish of his youngest, Bea, to the cold contempt of his oldest, Atsuko, whose heart, like Nishimura’s, was rapidly hardening. To be a better Karl Nishimura, he had to get through this. He had to get home to Buffalo. He would, no question, unless ghouls were already aboard, which was, of course, impossible.
Love Was the Ocean
At 1115 Hawaii-Aleutian time, yeoman seaman apprentice Jean Cobb and steelworker Edmund “Scud” Blakey—the former skipping out on electronics department clerical work, the latter abandoning his floor swabbing—were in the throes of sexual intercourse in an out-of-service men’s lavatory to the port side of the forward winch room. Jean was naked from the waist down, her shoes, socks, slacks, and underwear piled beneath a towel dispenser. Scud had not removed his shoes; his slacks and underwear were gathered about his ankles, his belt buckle chiming with each buck of his hips.
The act was in flagrant violation of a stringently policed rule: no romantic or physical relationships on the boat. An affair gone wrong in a carrier’s tight confinement could be explosive and therefore dangerous. Get caught, and you could be docked pay, even robbed of stripes. Officers never shut up about it, and lest you forget, laminated signs were posted everywhere, including right outside this very lavatory: ANY DISPLAY OF AFFECTION BETWEEN SHIPMATES WHILE ON BOARD THE SHIP IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Trysts happened anyway, of course they did, in linen closets and dry-good cupboards, rendezvous dubbed red-light specials for the scarlet lighting that suffused the corridors at night. The navy could restrict anything except love—or so swore Scud every time he and Jean had sex, to her gasped agreement. If the navy was Olympia, love was the ocean, incalculably more powerful, capable of swallowing whole militaries, entire civilizations.
Scud and Jean had known each other only for the duration of their deployment, but when you found the half of you missing all your life, you knew it. They tumbled into what they saw as Romeo and Juliet roles, casting their illicit love against both navy guidelines and their respective families, both of whom would denounce it. An affair illegally conducted aboard a navy ship? They would be disowned.
The yeoman and the steelworker passed each other pining, tragic notes in the halls. They stole quick, panting sex acts whenever they could. They whispered past sweaty locks of hair how they’d rather be dishonorably discharged, face a court-martial, or walk the plank than deny their love. With a penknife Scud sterilized with a lighter, they carved each other’s names into their upper arms, licked off the other’s blood, and kissed so that the blood washed back and forth, a salty oath.
Scud tried to slide his hands up under Jean’s shirt, but the fabric was too tight across her belly. Four months ago, one of their red-light specials had resulted in pregnancy; the two of them reveled in the wrath it would provoke in their families. Jean tore her shirt open, indifferent to popped buttons, because what did dress infractions matter anymore? As Scud’s coarse steelworker palms slid over her soft belly, she pictured his cock inside her, so near to their baby, and felt fulfilled, filled in two ways. If this was how the three of them had to die, she did not believe she could have imagined it better.
Jean and Scud had been among the first aboard Big Mama to see Chuck Corso’s broadcast, which had been the final push toward a decision they’d both felt coming. They made synchronous decisions to leave their posts and meet at their current secret spot, where they gasped their plans into each other’s mouths. It was torture to part ways for the single hour they gave themselves to gather the required items.
Scud’s task was the trickier of the two. One of the ship’s senior petty officers had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and was to disembark at San Diego to meet his fate. The ship’s sick bay had been stocked with Norflex, a sedative that reduced spasms and quieted jerking nerves. According to Scud’s research, an overdose would result in certain death, Here his TAD status came in handy; sick bay needed mopping too, and today, no one was keeping track of which nonrate was coming or going, Lifting the Norflex was easy.
On his way back to the lavatory, Scud emptied his coffers for the most exotic item the ship store carried: an engagement ring.
Jean, concealing her popped buttons, fetched the bottle of pineapple-distilled whiskey she’d picked up in Waipahu, Getting caught with alcohol could get you two months at half pay, but many sailors (and pretty much all the pilots) had a stash.
They reconvened. Scud put the ring on Jean’s finger. She cried. They drank, arranged Norflex ampules, and drank, and stripped, and drank, and fucked, and filled syringes, and fucked, and drank, sloppily now for courage, lips and necks stinging with whiskey. Jean sucked it from Scud’s chest, and Scud licked it from the cheap metal of Jean’s ring.
Jean injected a full syringe of Norflex into Scud’s beautiful, rounded shoulder. Scud injected an equal amount into Jean’s long, smooth thigh.
Neither reached climax. Neither minded. A climax of a different sort was upon them. The Norflex in their veins felt a lot like the pineapple-distilled whiskey down their throats. Their muscles relaxed. Scud’s erection softened like a relieved sigh. Jean’s legs folded bene
ath her into a cozy pile. They ended up less intertwined than they did intermixed, one body with three heartbeats, each growing fainter.
“Did you feel that?” Jean slurred.
“Was that…?” Scud trailed off.
The baby’s first kick, the birth of death.
Scud, Jean, and their child merged, the lovers whispering in awe how unique their love was across history, the same fallacy of a billion true loves before them, all of whom believed their copulation mattered more than that of a chimp, or dog, or rat. Scud and Jean died certain their rebellious deaths would show the world a thing or two. But it was the world that would show them. Their deaths would not be beautiful but ugly, not brief but protracted, and nothing like they’d expected.
The Golems
Jenny stared at her shoes. They were brown. This was traditional. Aviators were even called Brown Shoes, a designation elevating them from the Black Shoes of the rest of the navy, She often noticed sailors glance at her shoes upon meeting her, after which they adjusted their level of respect. A little thing, but it used to make Jenny feel good. Now her brown shoes mocked her. She, FNG, did not deserve them. She, FNG, ought to be forced to do FOD walks barefoot across the flight deck’s asphalt-coated steel, until her feet were neither brown nor black but red with penitent blood.
WHANG! WHOOSH!
Despite the takeoffs overhead, Jenny heard the click of the chapel’s closet door opening. She looked up from her brown shoes to see Father Bill Koppenborg emerge, He spotted her in her usual corner and approached with his usual placid smile. Instantly, Jenny felt a notch improved. Father Bill was a good man, she thought, one of the few aboard this ship. How lucky she felt to have found him.
“Apologies for my tardiness,” he said, “My Sweet.”
Jenny figured many women would take umbrage at the pet name, but la bomboncito was what her grandpa used to call her. Father Bill’s gait was less sprightly today; he was favoring his right leg. As usual, he combined camouflage slacks with a beige turtleneck sweatshirt reading, in block letters, CVN-68X CHAPLAIN. The ensemble said old man in a way that Jenny found endearing.
He took hold of the metal folding chair opposite her and turned it in her direction, wincing as he lowered himself. He sat so close their knees touched. This was normal; Jenny assumed he was hard of hearing. She folded her hands and bowed her head; Father Bill always began the same way.
“Let’s have us a little prayer,” he said.
WHANG! WHOOSH!
“O Lord, in the name of your only son, Jesus, bless the war in Afghanistan, O Lord, the war in Iraq, O Lord, the war in Syria, O Lord, the war in Yemen, O Lord, the war in Somalia, O Lord, the war in Libya, O Lord, the war in Niger, O Lord, the war on terrorism, O Lord. Keep our soldiers safe, O Lord, and help them, wherever in your great world they are, to shoot straight. Accept our praise and worship. Amen.”
“Amen,” Jenny agreed, though it was lost in the whang and whoosh.
Father Bill laced his hands over a knee.
“Have you been able to reach your parents and sisters since last we spoke?”
“No, Father,” she said. “I got through twice, but the call dropped both times.”
“Our phones are not blessed,” he conceded. “You must still be feeling lonely, then. How are you coping?”
WHANG! WHOOSH!
This one-on-one meeting, like all of them, had been scheduled days in advance. The fact that it was happening only hours after her bolting catastrophe had to be a sign, didn’t it? Here was a chance to discuss the event while it was still fresh and drain it of demonic force. Father Bill, she knew, would advocate confessing all of it, His interest in every detail of her life never failed to flatter.
Surrounded by a vast ocean, face-to-face with one’s cosmic insignificance, Jenny knew it was easy to drift toward religion. Yet here she was, in their twenty-fifth meeting, still unable to believe in Father Bill’s God no matter how badly she wanted to. It was the single truth she didn’t feel comfortable sharing with the priest. Wasn’t that a sign too?
“How am I coping,” she pondered. “Hmm. NyQuil, I guess.”
“Oh, My Sweet, no,” Father Bill soothed. “We’re only days from home. Focus on that. Surely there are things at home that will comfort you. The singing of birds? The laughter of children? Being woken up too early by people shoveling their sidewalk? God is everywhere. Your family, at least?”
Jenny tried to picture Jorge and Lorena Pagán looking happy, but could only see her father’s disappointed scowl and her mother’s mascara-stained cheeks upon hearing of her flight restriction. After religious consultation, she’d need to appear in the Red Serpents ready room, where degradation far worse than the Sweetheart Wall would be waiting. Maybe she’d never leave this chapel, Maybe she’d stay here with Father Bill, where it was safe.
Father Bill searched her face, “Won’t they be there to—”
WHANG! WHOOSH!
“—to meet you in San Diego?”
Jenny knew the shipyard reunion was the biggest of deals, Right now, elsewhere in the ship, hundreds of sailors were completing classes on how to readjust to civilian lives. Some had babies they’d never met. Some needed to learn not to criticize their girlfriends’ weight gain or new hairstyles. Like prom or graduation, it was impossible to avoid obsessing over the return, an event featured in far too many movies. The horsey clop of high heels over concrete, the jangle of a sailor’s dropped bag, the smushing together of flesh, the mutual devouring.
“No, they won’t be there,” she said, “Too expensive. I won’t see them till I’m back in Detroit.”
If I get back, she added to herself, which both startled and stirred her. She was at the end of something, there was no doubting it. Not the end she’d wanted either: her call sign on a plane.
“Pray on it,” Father Bill urged.
“I’ll try,” she said.
“I know praying is hard for you. Do you still have your Sailor’s Creed? I like your idea of repeating it, as a way to get used to prayer. Tell it to God. He will understand and will, in his own way, respond.”
Jenny had picked up the Sailor’s Creed in the ship’s store, a small, glossy poster she’d taped to the wall beside her rack, When she couldn’t sleep after general lights-out, she’d point her penlight at the creed and recite the parts she liked, her whisper blending into snores, sheet scuffles, and hissing pipes.
I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy.
But where had that spirit flown off to?
I will obey the orders of those appointed over me.
But was it God who gave the ultimate orders?
I am a United States Sailor.
These six words, at least, were demonstrably true, and she often repeated them until she somersaulted into sleep.
Once, Father Bill had asked all sorts of odd questions about how she slept. Was it hot in her rack? Of course, she’d said, all the boat’s lower levels were hot. What did she wear when sleeping? Shirt and underwear, she’d laughed, same as everyone. As they’d talked, he’d looked hungry. Jenny told herself he probably was hungry. Hungry to understand the minds and hearts of sailors in need.
Father Bill’s desire to help never failed to impress Jenny. She owed him her confidence.
WHANG! WHOOSH!
“I had … Last night … I was flying and I had a—”
Father Bill nodded. “I know.”
If she had a true sailor’s control of her behavior, she would have stopped herself from covering her face with her hands—another fragile, feminine gesture. Of course Father Bill knew. By now, everyone on Olympia knew.
“Speak from the heart,” Father Bill encouraged. “God is here, in this room, on this boat, in this ocean. He wants to know you, soul and body.”
Haltingly, Jennifer Angelys Pagán spoke. Her recollection of last night already had the firecracker clarity of enduring trauma.
At 1654, Jenny had strapped into an F-18, one stenciled, of course, with someone else�
��s call sign. At 1705, she finished taxiing to Catapult 3. Raindrops hit her windshield with the weight of rodents, but preflight checks were A-OK. She gave the barely visible ground crew the thumbs-up. She could not see fifty feet ahead; the storm inside her body matched the roar and whistle. I am a United States sailor, she told herself. The JBDs came up, the catapult pistoned, and she went from 0 to 130 miles per hour in two seconds. Her internal organs slammed to the back of her torso, Flight-deck lights whizzed by. The ocean came at her with black-froth tentacles. The F-18 bobbed upward through rain as clattering as coins.
After ninety-five minutes in roughneck skies, it was her turn to approach for landing: lower gear, tailhook, and flaps, tune to LSO frequency, drop to eight hundred feet. Nothing in the navy was more perilous than bringing a plane down on the surface of a rollicking carrier with sufficient finesse to snag the plane’s tailhook onto one of four arresting wires.
Missing all four cables was called a bolter—and that was what happened on Jenny’s first approach. The instant her wheels hit deck, she knew she’d overshot, so she punched the engines, soaring back up into the storm. Bolting was excusable during this kind of tempest, but it wasn’t the g-forces that stole Jenny’s breath, It was the realization that, just like that, the instant the F-18’s tires made their rubbery gobble against the deck, she’d lost her nerve. The dashboard lights were carnivalesque, cycling past her like a carousel.
She got back into the aerial queue. She approached again at 1842 and bolted again. She bolted a third time at 1920 and a fourth time at 1948. By then, she was one of only three jets in the air and so low on fuel that CAG Ellen Truswell had to launch a Super Hornet to perform a harrowing, probe-and-drogue refueling of Jenny’s jet, midair in the pummeling vortex. Now the Super Hornet, too, had to land—another life added to Jenny’s tab. She ran over the eject protocol and imagined the cold salt of black water slapping her face.
I am a United States sailor, she told herself.
Jenny would bolt four more times—eight times total—before, at 2207, she rode her stick just high enough to slip above the ship’s stern and hook the deck’s first wire. The F-18 slung to a halt; the harness crushed her torso. Instantly, her helmet fogged with sweat and tears and echoed with hyperventilation. Deck crew were at her window before she could compose herself, helping her unstrap and aiding her down the ladder. Her legs felt filleted of bone, and she crumpled to the wet asphalt. Men slung her limp arms over their shoulders and dragged her to the island. No jets were left to make noise, so she thanked the storm for covering her sobs.
The Living Dead Page 21