The Monster MASH

by Angie Fox

  “I don’t need a wheelchair,” he snorted, towering above me. I stared straight into lean, hard muscle. And at that moment, I also saw the absurdity of cramming this powerful soldier into a chair.

  He looked like he could wrestle a minotaur. Still, if I wanted to get him out of there, I had to follow protocol. “It’s the only way you’re leaving with me.”

  He gave me a faint salty smile. “Are you sure about that?”

  No. “Listen.” I lowered my voice. “You want to talk, right? Well, then I’ve got to get you somewhere private. In this.” I pointed to the wheelchair, the other hand balled into a fist in the pocket of my scrubs. “If anyone sees you walking around, you run the risk of getting sent back to your unit, with or without any interference from me. And you know what? I’d be just fine with that.” I’d fall down drunk with relief. “So if you want to talk, get in the chair.”

  The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Do you know your cheeks flush when you’re angry?”

  “Can it. Five more seconds and I walk.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn I saw a flicker of surprise. He stared at me for a long moment, almost daring me to bolt before taking two powerful strides in the direction of the feeble chair. “Shall we?” he asked dryly, sprawling over it like a king at court.

  Good enough for me. I grabbed the handles and steered His Highness down the long hallway toward the door, ignoring the catcalls from the soldiers.

  The doctor needs to see you alone?

  Have fun with that exam.

  Ask her if she makes house calls!

  I’m next!

  Galen grinned like he was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I, on the other hand, blushed down to my toes. Didn’t these guys ever grow up?

  Didn’t they see that I’d won? I’d gotten my way. Galen was going outside with me, per regulations.

  So why did I feel like I’d just handed him the battle?

  Jaw clenched, I focused straight ahead as I steered him toward the door. What I had to say to the commander was better said in private. There were very few options if you wanted to be alone in a MASH camp. Walking was one of them.

  Maybe it would clear my head. Over the years I’d made a habit of wandering the red dirt paths. It was the only place to go. Outside camp was too dangerous, what with packs of imps on the loose. Not to mention enemy patrols. And if you could manage to avoid those, you risked sand traps that could swallow a person faster than quicksand.

  Besides, the camp walkways weren’t half bad, especially in the evening as the twin suns set. It was cooler then, with fewer people rushing around.

  At last, we made it out of the recovery tent.

  “That was brutal,” I said as the door slammed closed behind us.

  “Best time I’ve had all month,” Galen said, throwing an arm over the back of the chair. He gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Maybe I should start letting you order me around.”

  I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the road. Once I got him somewhere private, it would be worth it.

  We passed the supply hutch. Naturally the female clerk had to whistle. Then there were the two nurses at the bulletin board, who openly nudged each other and smiled.

  What was with these people?

  “Hey, Petra,” one of the nurses called, “where are you taking that half-naked demigod?”

  “Mind dropping him off at my place?” the other one said, giggling.

  What? My stomach twisted. “He’s not—” Merde. Yes, he was half naked and somehow managed to look both gorgeous and in charge. I didn’t know if I wanted to slap him or kiss him.

  “Sorry, ladies,” Galen called, “I’m all hers tonight.”

  “Stop encouraging them,” I hissed.

  “It’s true,” he said, to them and to me.

  “Yes, but not the way they…forget it,” I said, wheeling him faster.

  I headed for the shadows, past the rectangular shack that served as the officers’ club. The tin roof was loud as heck during the monthly rainstorm, but it gave the bar its bite. Large gutters funneled down into tanks that captured Hell’s Rain. Rodger had measured it at 180 proof. I didn’t like to touch the stuff. Only now it didn’t sound half bad. If anybody could drive me to drink, it was Galen.

  Maybe I should have stopped for a glass because, horror of horrors, Colonel Kosta emerged from the shadows, coming our way. Oh, this was just great.

  Colonel Kosta held himself impossibly erect, shoulders squared, his shaved head gleaming under the outside floodlights. An angry scar cut down his right cheek and over his mouth and chin, a souvenir from the Battle of Thermopylae.

  Maybe he’d let us pass. I gripped the wheelchair handles tighter. It wasn’t that I’d necessarily be in trouble. But I didn’t want any questions, either.

  Leaning down, I whispered against Galen’s ear, “Be casual.”

  I could feel him grinning. “What? Do you want me to take something else off?”

  Maybe I’d died and gone to hell. I tried not to let my mortification show, which was probably impossible.

  Kosta’s sharp gaze lingered on my patient as he passed. “Evening, Robichaud.”

  “Colonel,” I said, straightening. Maybe I could just be struck by lightning and be done with it.

  Somehow—I think I blocked it out—I managed to get Galen past the medical supply tents, past the enlisted club, the general supply depot, and the ambulance lot. The suns had almost set, and the motor pool was lit with lanterns and torches. A few mechanics had a jeep up on blocks and were working underneath.

  One of the smart alecks called out to us as we passed, “You two going to see the good father?”

  “At least I’ve been invited, Lazio,” I shot back.

  Galen drew a hand through his short spiky hair. “Something I should know about?” he asked, watching Lazio chuckle with a few of the mechanics.

  “Oh, it’s dumb.” Which was what made it kind of fun. “There’s really nowhere to be alone in a MASH camp, so when people want to get a bit amorous, they head back to this huge outcropping of rocks past the cemetery and beyond the minefield.”

  “Minefield?” He sounded surprised.

  “That’s what we call the junkyard. I mean, you can’t let frisky couples sneak in and out of there without wiring the place with a few pranks.”

  He seemed amused at that. “And couples? They still risk it?”

  “For half an hour alone? You bet.”

  “How romantic.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Now, why had I told him that?

  “Anyway, our chaplain has a hut out that way. He likes to minister to the semi-demonic creatures, try to help turn them around. As you can imagine, they’re a bit reluctant to show up in camp during office hours.”

  I parked the chair. Galen was up and out of it before I could even get the emergency brake on. I let it slide. We were finally alone. Now I just had to think of exactly what to say to the man.

  The torches cast an uneven light as full night came upon us.

  His back muscles bunched as he squinted out past the cemetery, toward the mounding scrapyard beyond.

  “Believe it or not, there’s a path through it,” I said. “Toward the end, you come to a fork in the road. Go left and you come up on Father McArio’s hut. Go right and it’s make-out city.”

  “Ahh.” He turned back to me, eyes glittering. “So when you want to be alone with your sweetheart…”

  “You invite them out to see the good father.”

  He gave me a long look. “And what does your camp commander have to say about that?”

  “As much of a hardnose as he can be”—and Kosta definitely took pride in driving us to our limit—“he ignores the junkyard and the rocks.” It happened outside the main camp. Besides, the old Spartan knew when to throw us a bone.

  Galen had fallen silent. Thinking, no doubt. No good could come of that.

  “You have a target range?” He indicated a series of lumps in the fiel
d beyond the motor pool.

  My voice caught. “That’s our cemetery.”

  He didn’t get it right away. “Soldiers are cremated.”

  “Yes.” Demigods were lit upon a funeral pyre, as tradition demanded. “These are the doctors and the nurses. Mechanics and clerks.” These were the people who never made it out of Limbo. Someday I’d be one of them.

  He studied the crude wooden tombstones. We couldn’t exactly quarry stone, not with a war going on. But we did get a monthly shipment of wood.

  “We’re here for life, too.” Or until the end of the war. “Families can claim a body, and the army will ship one of us home. Those without families stay here.”

  My throat closed.

  His eyes cut to me as if he knew what I’d been thinking.

  “You are one of the ones staying.”

  I tried to smile and failed. “Yes.”

  I didn’t have anyone left. Well, anyone who knew I had a supernatural side.

  My boyfriend during med school had been a shapeshifting dragon. Marc had been drafted by the old gods while he was still in his surgical fellowship. He’d been killed almost immediately.

  My dad had been human. He’d kept my secret almost too well. He’d told the family I’d gone off to serve the poor in Haiti. A necessary lie. No one in my extended family knew about my mother’s fae nature or my military service for the New God Army. Now, with Dad dead, there was no one left to even know I was here.

  I’d been alone ever since.

  Galen touched my shoulder. In an absurd moment of weakness, I let him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply.

  I shrugged. “For what? It’s not your fault.”

  He remained 100 percent focused on me. “It will be if I can’t stop this,” he said, refusing to let me discount my pain.

  I glanced away. I didn’t want to go there.

  “You can’t save everyone,” I told him.

  Deep in the cemetery, a ghostly soul shimmered between the graves. It took me a moment to realize who it was.

  Charlie.

  The wind ruffled his sandy brown hair as he stared out past the camp, into nothingness.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. That’s it. I was done. I grabbed the wheelchair, steering it away from the civilian part of the cemetery. I should have tried to get Galen back in it, or at least examined him, but who was I kidding? There was no trace of his injury. And I didn’t want to argue with a half-naked demigod.

  Suddenly this place didn’t seem like such a good idea.

  “Let’s get you back. It’s cold.”

  “I’m not cold.” He stood in front of me, blocking me. Cripes, he was bullheaded. I’d never known anyone so determined to insert himself into my own personal hell.

  He stared down at me, positively dripping with challenge. “I stayed for you,” he said as if he could make me face it by sheer force of will.

  “The ambulances broke down.” I bit off every word. Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe it.

  “I don’t believe that, and neither do you.” He caught me by the shoulders. “When I took that poisoned dagger to the chest, I thought I was going to die.”

  I’d seen. I knew.

  “What was it like?” I asked, startling him.

  His fingers loosened and he fell silent for a moment as if he was hesitant to say more.

  “It was almost a relief for it to be over.” Guilt flickered across his features. “The worst part about war isn’t the fighting,” he went on, almost to himself. “It’s when you’re helpless to stop the horror from reaching innocent people. Kids. Families. Not everybody signed up to have their guts torn out. I didn’t know how to stop it. But now maybe we can change things.”

  I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. “I hope you do. You’re a good soldier.”

  He made a low sound in his throat. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  Okay, fine. This place was a nightmare, and the stark truth was—there was nothing we could do about it. Well, except pursue a doomed prophecy, which was a surefire way to fail again and get me killed in the process.

  He caressed my skin, watching goose bumps erupt on my shoulders. “You’re good at deflection, Doctor. Why is that?”

  Years and years of practice.

  “Let’s go,” I said, pulling away.

  This time he let me.

  We began walking again. At the edge of the cemetery, we passed three smoldering funeral pyres. It had been a rough day yesterday.

  “Where were you when you were stabbed with the dagger?” I asked.

  He owed me that at least, to help me figure out why this thing was following me.

  His eyes lingered on the funeral pyres. “It’s classified.”

  “Who stabbed you?” I asked, more tartly than I’d intended. “Is that classified, too?”

  “I didn’t see,” he said, frustrated. “It doesn’t matter.” He stopped. “I understand you’re afraid. It’s part of the job. But it doesn’t mean you can step away and pretend this isn’t real.”

  “Pretend?” That was rich. “Just because I don’t happen to agree with you, you think I live in fantasy land?” I felt every slice of humanity this place cut out of me. I was raw with it. “Do you think I was pretending when I pulled that knife out of your chest?” I’d given everything I had to this job and to him.

  He brought a hand up to his chest and ripped the bandage away. An angry red scar sliced across tan skin, the only indication he’d nearly died yesterday. “We were brought together for a reason. I can feel it. You can, too.”

  Feeling? What did he know about feeling? If I felt any more, it would eat me alive. “Listen, hotshot, this war isn’t my fault. What may or may not happen to those kids you’re talking about is not my fault. What happened in that OR is not my fault.”

  “No,” he thundered. “It’s your moral obligation.”

  That was rich. “My moral obligation is to keep soldiers like you alive.”

  Even when they acted like jerks. I turned and walked away.

  He followed me.

  Merde. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t take it for one second longer. I spun back to face him. “Seriously. What’s your angle, Galen? What do you want?”

  In two rough steps he was right there with me, on me. “I want the right team on my side when the real battle begins. Otherwise there is no hope—for you or my men or anybody else.”

  He was positively lethal. And frightening. And exactly the man I’d want on my side if all hell broke loose.

  “We have to end this,” he stated as if it were inevitable. “Soon.”

  “Impossible,” I said. I could feel the heat rolling off him, and me.

  He didn’t give an inch. “I know things,” he said, his voice low and intense. “I’m out of the loop now,” he added, almost to himself.

  “Good.”

  “I think that’s fate, too,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. He locked eyes with me. “I need to stay here, but my men could be on the move as we speak.”

  My stomach fluttered. “Doing what?” I didn’t like the way his voice sounded, or the fear behind his words.

  “It’s classified.”

  I hated the military.

  He inhaled sharply. “I can’t tell you. I don’t need to tell you. You only have to understand that it will be bad for all of us. And disastrous for those on Earth.”

  I rubbed my eyes. He would have to say that.

  “I need to know,” I said flatly. “I can’t just go on blind trust.” I’d barely met the man. He owed me facts, not dire predictions of doom and gloom.

  “Listen to me. I’m here for a reason. We came together for something bigger than just saving my life.” He was absolutely convinced, driven. On a collision course with death and ruin. “Help me figure this out.”

  “I’m afraid,” I said. Terrified.

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “Good. It’ll help keep you alive.”

 
; Chapter Six

  I returned Galen to the recovery ward. I hoped to the gods he’d be out of our camp in the next twenty-four hours. Otherwise I wouldn’t know what to do with him.

  Holly, the charge nurse, leaned her elbows on her desk. Her mop of blond hair was streaked with red highlights. She’d tied part of it into a ponytail holder and left the rest free.

  “Do you have the medical history file on Galen of Delphi?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It hasn’t come in yet. You want me to let you know when it does?”

  “Please.” Knowledge was power, and I needed every bit of it when it came to this man.

  She wrote a Post-it note for herself and added it to the flurry on her desk. “You heading to karaoke?”

  “No.” I stole a Starburst out of her candy bowl and unwrapped it. “I’m going to drop in on Father McArio.”

  She grinned. “Rumor here is that you already went to the rocks.”

  Of all the… “I suppose denying it will only make it worse,” I said, cringing.

  “Guaranteed.”

  Hades. I felt the sting of it. And a tug of disappointment as well. If I was going to be accused of stripping down a hot, broody special ops officer, I wanted to actually get a taste of something besides his temper.

  Or maybe I really was going crazy.

  “Hello Petra,” Jeffe rumbled. I hadn’t even known the sphinx was behind me.

  He twitched his nose like a cat, his copper mane swishing at his shoulders. “I can hold my silence no longer.”

  Oh good. A sphinx was going to lecture me about my love life.

  “You listen to me,” he said as if he were divulging the secrets of the Great Pyramids. “It is not a good idea to go through the minefield right now.”

  When was it ever a good idea? The vacation pot was up to three weeks. The minefield was the perfect place to give a prank a test run. Now it seemed even Jeffe was getting in on the act. “What’d you do, slick?”

  He straightened his front legs and stiffened his shoulders. “I cannot tell you.”

  I stuffed the candy wrapper into my pocket. “Fair enough.” After all, Rodger had gotten the sphinx drunk and encased him in stone last week. Of course, it was just plaster of paris and we let him out. Still, Jeffe had his pride.