World of Ashes

by J. K. Robinson

  “She has a bangin’ ass.” Allen said, sneaking up behind Ethan like he always did. “I’d hit that.” Ethan didn’t respond, he just walked off, slightly angry he’d have to live through the rest of the day.

  Both units spent the night in the Holiday Inn across from the new Phoenix Shopping Center at the edge of town. It was high ground and not in the center of the city with several good escape routes. There was electricity once someone found the breaker switch, which meant hot water and a TV someone hooked up to a laptop with movies on the hard drive. Everyone was happy to take showers after the boilers heated up. Lee ordered a blackout on lights, but someone figure out that the comforters blocked a lot of light and in no time they’d blocked off the windows surrounding the pool area. What a treat to be able to swim and not have a zombie grab you from below!

  There were easily more people than rooms, so Ethan, Lee, Keith and Allen got to share the honeymoon suite. Everyone else was four or five to a room in order to stay off the first floor, but no one complained. Flushing toilets, a change of scenery, that omnipresent clean “hotel smell” and the peace de la resistance, the afore mentioned swimming pool that was for some reason not frozen over.

  Not having any desire to swim given the horrendous day he’d had, Ethan went back to his room after the dinner the two units shared in the dining room. It had been a noisy affair, more akin to a Klingon bloodwine festival than a military chow hall. He was glad to get away. Flopping down in the bed he reached for the TV remote and turned it on. Of course there was only static, but it was comforting nonetheless. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched TV. Probably in the barracks before redeployment, but that was very nearly a year ago now.

  Allen came rushing in, his underwear soaked and shivering as the hotel’s heat hadn’t warmed the halls yet. “I hope this dries before tomorrow. I don’t want to pack wet stuff in this cold.” Jumping, Allen belly flopped onto the bed. It bounced so hard Ethan almost fell off, but he didn’t let being tossed in the air like a trampoline interrupt his brooding mood.

  Allen caught on that something was still wrong. “Look, Ethan, you can’t blame yourself for the rest of your life.”

  “Yes. I can.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to… I don’t even have a picture of her anymore.”

  Allen raised an eyebrow while he changed underwear. “Of your fiancé? Why wouldn’t you have a picture of her?”

  “Do you have a picture of your girlfriend that wasn’t on a cell phone?”

  “Which one? There’s Amanda Gray from over on Virgil Street, and then there’s-”

  “All my pictures of her were on my cellphone… The Army confiscated it before we shipped out. I don’t know why I didn’t have a hardcopy…” Standing up, Ethan tossed his clothes off and headed into the shower. He had been waiting for the hot water to refill. The men had fairly drained the tanks.

  Allen had more to say, but there was a knock at the door. Figuring Lee or Keith had forgotten their room key, Allen, buck naked just for the sake of freaking someone out, answered the door. Only it wasn’t Lee, or Keith, or even someone from 1st Cav. Corporal Hoffman stood there in her PT uniform, hair still wet. Without a word she pushed Allen into the room, grabbed a pair of pants off a chair, put them in his hands and shoved him out the door before he could protest.

  Turning to Ethan, who was just standing there with nothing but socks on while prepping for his shower, she locked eyes with him and shoved him into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

  “What are you doing?” Ethan asked, using a towel to cover himself up.

  She didn’t say anything, but just tore her shirt off over her head and made the green shorts disappear as if she were a magician. Ethan didn’t want to look, he wanted to wallow in his pain and punish himself for every sin he’d ever committed, real or perceived. But she was persistent, not letting him shut her out. She was small, her skin a natural caramel complexion, her eyes bordered on emerald with flecks of gold if one looked hard enough, and he was looking that hard. She tossed away Ethan’s towel, proving at least part of him wanted her to be there. Had he been alone, the shower might have been the best opportunity all day to pull the trigger, the bathroom providing easy cleanup, assuming anyone would bother. Instead Ethan had to accept he was going to give into this woman’s demands. His heart ached so much he lacked the will to fight back, the intoxication of feeling the warmth of another person too much for him.

  “I don’t even know your name.” Ethan tried to say. It came out as a whisper.

  Though much shorter than Ethan, a woman so lovely closed his eyes with her fingertips and whispered in his ear, “I’m Mary.”

  Reaching behind Ethan so that her perfect, but small breasts pressed against him she turned the water on, then she kissed him. There was a chance, as she ran her fingers through his hair and dug her nails into his back, that their lips did not part for an incalculable time. Ethan tried with all his might to wipe the image of his beloved from his mind, if only for this short time, but it was impossible. Who knew what Mary saw in him, clutching Ethan against the shower, the hot water becoming steam all around them. Finally unable to fight his desperation to connect with someone, anyone, Ethan lifted her into the hot water. The steam clouded the bathroom as they found comfort in one another’s arms. Every fiber of their being told them they had to stop, but neither could in their desperation to fill the void. The beauty of intimacy, having someone to hold and to hold you back was the only medicine either had now. For all they knew they could be dead before dawn, and neither wanted to die now with the crushing weight they carried. How could one ascend to the promised land of angels with worldly shackles holding you down?

  She made the slightest of noises as Ethan placed her on his lap, perched on the built-in ledge of the luxurious shower. He kissed down her body until he was between her legs, his hands cupping her from beneath and holding her in place while he forgot himself. He spent a long, long time there, his heart lifting with the most fleeting joy every time she was unable to hold back and would moan or let loose a scream. An eternity later they lay under the soothing, hot waterfall while he was inside her, and didn’t leave until she was finished, and then so was he. They collapsed on the bed after round three or four, Ethan could not recount. Fighting the urge to scream Nicole’s name, Ethan buried his face in Mary’s hair and fell into a deeper sleep than he’d had in years. No nightmares plagued Ethan that night, and he’d always remember that.

  Ethan awoke the next morning having slept better than he ever had in his life. Babies don’t sleep that good. Lee was sitting in the chair next to the bed reading Dente’s Inferno. Ethan almost panicked and looked for Mary, but she was gone.

  “Did you sleep well?” Lee asked. Ethan didn’t respond. Lee looked behind his brother, the pillows were messed up and there was an indentation in the bed where someone else had been. “The Marines pulled out about an hour ago.” Putting the book away Lee zipped up his field jacket. “Try not to hate yourself, Ethan. I know you’re good at it. Just take solace in the fact that you shared something beautiful with someone, and she shared herself with you.”

  Ethan still didn’t say anything. Poetic advice was never Lee’s strong suit. He just put his clothes on and met the rest of the company in the parking lot. Someone shot a zombie that had crawled out of the BP station across the road, but like the Iraq War Ethan had witnessed it was common to hear random gunfire and no one really paid attention to such a mundane event. The rest of the mission consisted of mapping out neighborhoods to be looted and the largest clusters of zombies to be destroyed while they were still frozen. Ethan didn’t speak the rest of the trip until they were packing to leave. He’d pushed Corporal Mary Hoffman to the farthest reaches of his mind and was ready to sleep the trip home when the unmistakable sound of machinegun fire echoed across the valley the town lay in. It wasn’t far away, may
be a mile or two down the road, but it was for sure in the direction the Marines had marched.

  Lee grabbed the radio, “Jarhead Seven this is Alamo Six, do you copy?” Only static came over the line Lee was reserving for the Marines. “Jarhead Seven, this is Alamo Six. Respond.”

  There was a forever-long pause before a voice Ethan instantly recognized as the Marine named Jack screamed over the line, “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY! We’re taking fire from the storage units! MAYDAY!”

  “Storage units? There’s hundreds of those around.” Keith said, “Ask him what road they’re on.”

  “Fuck that!” Ethan and Lee said simultaneously. Lee jumped into the driver’s seat of a 5ton, Ethan taking the passenger’s side. “Get into the trucks! Let’s go!” In a quick fashion the entire unit jumped into their trucks and they charged down Highway 100 at full speed, slamming into abandoned cars with reckless abandon and pulverizing any infected puss-bag that got in the way.

  The gunfire, which was not one sided, flew across the road like two warships at point blank range. Lee ordered the Cavalrymen to deploy and flank the storage units. They’d practiced anti-zombie tactics, but also practiced MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) ad nausium, and so clearing the storage units was nothing but a live-fire exercise to the Soldiers of Sullivan’s 1st Cav. They swept the cubicles and buildings with lightning speed and the precision of master warriors. Cracks of rifle fire and screams for anything but a medic made it clear the bad guys weren’t winning, or surrendering. The clearing operation lasted maybe ten minutes before Sergeant Estrada from Third Herd radioed all clear.

  Ethan had forced Allen to man a 240 again, but that was only because of his foot, and because he didn’t want to hear the boy’s jokes as he searched for the woman he’d just spent the night with. He found her on the Marine’s side of the road in a drainage ditch that made a natural trench. She was trying to keep Master Gunnery Sergeant Judge’s femoral artery from spilling all his blood onto the snow and grass. Keith was working furiously to patch several other wounds across the man’s body, having already cut his uniform off, but it was a rapidly losing battle.

  Blood gurgled from his mouth, he reached out and grabbed Ethan’s arm. “Did we kill em?” Judge stammered, his lips turning cyanotic. Ethan had seen death before. Blood wasn’t new to him, he felt himself go numb to block the pain before he answered.

  “Yes, Master Gunnery Sergeant. We killed them all with extreme fucking prejudice. Your Marines gave ‘em hell.” Ethan answered, hoping the dying man’s vision was too blurry to see his tears.

  “Good.” Judge said as Keith poured in a chemical bandage. The saw-dust looking stuff sizzled as it cauterized the wounds, but Judge refused to scream. He refused to let his Marines see him die like that. All two of them that is. The Marine named Jack, and Mary were all that was left. The gang that had been living in the storage units had caught the Marines marching along the road in column formation. It was good for defending from zombies, but only made them look like tin soldiers, lined up for the slaughter when the gang turned their stolen machineguns on them.

  Taking a final breath Master Gunnery Sergeant Judge died without much more ceremony. Keith rolled back on his haunches and put his head between his knees in resignation. The Marine named Jack had turned the color of the snow and was babbling to himself quietly, huddled against a burned out car door, his hand white-knuckled around the receiver of a radio that was still attached to a dead Marine, most of his chest missing. Mary, however, just stood and tossed an unused HemCon bandage back into her backpack. She knew how to be numb now too.

  Ethan stepped around the carnage and without asking embraced her. She let him, but she didn’t cry. She was still in shock, she couldn’t cry if she wanted to. “I want to go home…” Mary whispered. For a moment Ethan almost considered taking her with him.

  1st Cav put their dead comrades in body bags and loaded them into the back of one of the trucks, those who had been riding in it finding a way to squeeze into other trucks. Mary sat in the back of the makeshift hearse with Jack, the dead, and Ethan. The Cavalry had managed to take one of the gang members alive, but that bastard was bound and gagged with Gorilla Tape and 550 Cord in another vehicle so Jack and Mary couldn’t gut him. Once the convoy returned the Marines to the power plant Lee planned to turn him over to the Texans. Ethan could easily have arrested him under any guise of authority, but this wasn’t their prisoner.

  At the farthest entry point to the power plant a platoon of Texas Marines and an M-1 Abrams tank rolled out from the woods to block the convoy. Lee got out and informed their CO of the ambush. The tailgate to the truck Ethan was in dropped and the eyes of every Marine and civilian worker widened. Some cried, others had to sit down. Blood was still dripping from the bodies and now covering the truck’s axel.

  Mary stepped off the truck and saluted the lieutenant on duty, but seemed to barely register his presence. “Corporal Hoffman, reporting for First Squad, First Platoon…” But she couldn’t finish. The lieutenant returned the salute and nodded that he wasn’t going to press her for any more. He’d get what he wanted from Captain Cally.

  After losing track of Mary as the civilian medics whisked her and Jack away, Ethan settled back into his seat and tried to order his thoughts. They were a jumble of images and emotions from two different wars with and nowhere, and no way to express them. That was the day he started a journal on the last twenty pages of the tan all-weather notebook Mstr.Gy.Sgt Judge had carried. In the years to come he would claim that the journal was all that kept him sane, and maybe alive.

  6

  The engine of an aircraft roared overhead. Most people looked up as it wasn’t every day you heard an airplane anymore. Ethan looked up into the sky through his sun glasses. He was light sensitive and looking up would have been too painful otherwise. Behind him newcomers to the town were earning their keep building the new safety wall and tending to the mass graves for euthanized zombies, but every stopped to watch the noise they’d once taken for granted.

  “C-130 Hercules?” Keith asked, unsure of his plane silhouettes. “Been a while since I heard one of those. Think they’re resupplying Labodie?”

  Ethan was just about to say something but was cut short by the unmistakable sounds of an engine sputtering and coughing. Some of the clouds and weather systems were still dense with ash. The plane circling the town in a long arching turn, lining itself up with the airfield. The Sullivan airport wasn’t very big, but a C-130 could make a crash landing there. They’d cleared the airfield in preparation for just such an event when the Texans told Lee they could expect an emergency supply drop for helping them defeat another road gang. Mayor Kenly had plans to put a spotter aircraft up soon, but that was dependent on the weather and rapidly diminishing fuel reserves.

  “Look!” Keith pointed into the sky over the Wal*Mart. Six parachutes floated down through the clouds toward the town. They looked like they’d be landing almost exactly on target on the airfield, except for one who would land on the highway.

  Pulling up to the truck stop outpost Ethan managed to jump onto the Humvee that was headed down the highway to pick up the C-130 crewmember who’d gone astray. They could still hear the engines sputtering, the plane getting farther away. Ethan jumped in a canvas top Humvee with two other Deputies and drove toward the airman who’d landed on the highway.

  They came to a halt as a wanderer who’d been walking toward the town helped the crewman to his feet. Ethan got on the truck’s PA system. “Step away from the Airman. Quarantine of individuals pending medical examination is still in effect.”

  Walking up to them while still dragging his parachute the Airman looked relieved, “I gotta get to a radio. That plane’s goin’ down. I’m Tech Sergeant Sam Groupe, 94th Texan Air Lift Squadron, Amarillo Texas. Our ship took some geese to the intake in that soup up there.”

  “Is anyone still onboard your plane?” One of the deputies asked.

  “How many chutes were there?” Groupe as
ked, detaching himself from his chute and checking his equipment while Ethan patted down the wonderer. Another deputy stepped up to take the man’s information and escort him to the Sally Port.

  “Six total.”

  “Fucking bastards.” Groupe stamped his foot. “Captain’s Michaels and Saio are still onboard. We’re delivering munitions to the power plant’s security detachment, lots of shit we don’t want gangbangers to have, you know, high explosives and such. We have orders to destroy the aircraft and cargo should we have to abandon it. Ten to one those demented bastards are gonna try to ditch over the Mississippi.”

  “That’s a long fucking way from here. Why not just stall it, bail and let the fire take care of it?” Ethan hurried Groupe towards the truck.

  “The munitions containers are designed to be recovered from a crash. Best way to keep them out of enemy hands is to sink them.”

  Back at the Sally Port entrance to the town they met Mayor Kenly. “I found another one.” Ethan nodded to the seldom seen official. His ‘asthma’ kept him at home most days now. “Says-”

  “That the pilots are going to try to ditch in the Mississippi.” Lee finished his brother’s sentence. “I just talked to the crew chief. He’s still in radio contact with them. He’s trying to get them to gain altitude, ditch, and let the plane burn, but I don’t think they’re going to.”

  “Can we still contact the power plant? They might want to know about this.” Ethan said.

  “Assuming they don’t already know. What good is C-4 and artillery and mortars against zombies, I wonder? If those worked, none of this would be happening.” Kenly brushed dust off his Stetson and headed for the airport office.