Violent Peace: The War With China: Aftermath of Armageddon

by David Poyer

  “I just wonder what it was all about,” he muttered now, rubbing his lower jaw. The Navy said he needed serious dental work—he had gum disease, needed root canals and tooth replacements—but had let him postpone it for a few days, so they could get reacquainted.

  “What … what what was all about, Eddie? The camp, you mean?” she murmured, looking up. Hoping for maybe a hug, or a quick kiss, but he wasn’t even looking at her. The monkeys seemed to interest him more.

  Shit, what had the Chinese done? He’d been a randy goat. Now he was acting like some kind of detached, celibate guru, floating above earthly desires. He hadn’t even touched breakfast, except for two bites of rice, a pickled carrot, and a few sips of hot green tea.

  “No … the whole fucking war. What it was about.” He nodded at the monkeys. “Was it just that … like that?”

  She blinked. “I’m not following, Eddie. Like what?”

  “Like, they wanted us out of the pool? And we didn’t want to go?”

  She blinked again, thinking for a moment he was joking. But he wasn’t smiling. After a moment she said, trying to banter back, “Or we owned the water, and they wanted in.”

  Where was this coming from? The guy she’d known had never thought deeply about anything. Well, about football. Golf. And flying. But maybe being in a prison camp gave you time to think.

  “Sorry, I guess I’m tired,” he said. “That was kind of a rough path.”

  Actually it had been easy, a smooth gentle slope. But she nodded. “Yeah, it was a bit of a climb. Want to go back?”

  “No, this is all right. Let’s grab that bench over there.”

  A Japanese couple, gray-haired, a head shorter than the two Americans, smiled and half bowed as they passed. Cheryl smiled and bobbed her head back. They settled on a concrete bench overlooking the pool area.

  “So,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “You turned out to be the real hero in this war.”

  She took his hand, which lay lifeless and rather cold in hers. “I think we both did okay, Eddie.”

  “You got the DSC. I get the POW medal.”

  They were comparing decorations? “Yeah, but … you’re getting the Heart too, right?”

  “I don’t know. They might not give medals for cracking your head open when you punch out.” He huffed a sigh, still not looking at her. “What is it with you, Cher?”

  “With me? What is what?” She smiled, squeezing his hand, but not getting anything back. “I don’t understand. Explain it to me.”

  “Something’s different. You’re like, not the same. You were always nervous. Anxious. That was kind of what I liked about you. Plus that you were incredibly hot, of course.” A slight grin; a very faint glimmer of the old Chip, as if seen darkly beneath many layers of aging plastic.

  “You’re attracted to anxious girls?”

  “You know what I mean. Like, I had too much self-confidence. Well, you gotta have some of that when you’re going down the chute in Case Three seas, low fuel and no divert. But it was like … I guess I thought we could share. I’d help you out there, and you’d help me in the brains department. Help me figure life out. I don’t know. I was only twenty-five.”

  She turned the gold ring around on her finger. He didn’t have his anymore. Said they’d stolen it and his watch on the fishing boat that had pulled him out of the East China Sea. He’d ditched his pistol as soon as he hit the water, and his radio hadn’t worked, damaged in the bailout. The fishermen had beat on him some after they pulled him aboard, then turned him over to the military cops. Who’d relieved him of the rest of his survival gear.

  Beyond that, he hadn’t said much about his captivity. Only that they hadn’t gotten much to eat, and that after a group of prisoners had escaped from another camp, they’d spent the nights locked into steel trash containers, huddled together for warmth.

  Well, maybe he was starting to share now. She’d just have to be patient and wait.

  But she had something to share too. And she wasn’t looking forward to saying it. But it had to be done. Here, now, today. Time wasn’t going to improve the news. And she’d truly thought he was KIA, after all.

  More screaming erupted from the pool. The monkeys were throwing feces at each other. Really, they’d looked cute and funny in the pictures, but she was getting the unvarnished experience now. Still, the mountains were lovely, and she and Eddie would have their own hot bath, without floating poo, back in the room. Or a communal soak at the humans-only onsen up the hill, stewing alongside naked Japanese. Probably mainly older couples, like the pair who’d bowed to them.

  She said in a low voice, “And I’m not like that anymore. Is that what you’re saying?”

  For an answer he fumbled in his parka and took out a pack of the cigarettes he’d bought at the exchange, despite her askance look, while she’d been shopping for hiking boots. She’d started to ask, When did you start, but didn’t.

  Once again, she choked back questions. Just tried to go with the flow, and let him set the pace.

  He lit up with a disposable lighter and puffed morosely, watching the animals. More were arriving now, trekking down from the hill, where they apparently lived. More tourists were arriving too, toiling up a rugged path from the direction of the train station. They looked Asian. She and Eddie were the only Europeans at the hotel, too. If white Americans could still be considered Europeans.

  She took a deep breath and crossed her arms. Boy, she didn’t want to do this. But the longer she let it go, the worse it would be. “I’m really glad you’re here,” she opened. “I mean it, Eddie. I thought for so long that you were … well, gone. Never coming back. The Navy told me that. Missing, presumed dead. Nobody knew you survived. And the Red Cross never got an accounting from the camps until the armistice. So I just—I just had to accept that.”

  He smoked morosely, but nodded. Still watching the pond, where the small monkey, trying to creep in again, was being ejected once more, with screeches and bites and flailing arms. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Must’ve been rough.”

  What the hell did that mean? She tried to ignore it, to not take offense; had to just plow on. “What I mean is, I mourned you, Eddie. I went through all those grief-stage things. But we were at war, and I was a CO. I had my people to look out for. I was devastated at losing you. But I came to terms with it. That I’d have to live without you.”

  He flicked ash off the cigarette, staring at the ground. “Okay, sure. But it sounds like you’re working up to some kind of apology, I think. So … why?”

  She took another deep breath. “Anyway … I want to be honest with you. I got involved with a guy, in Hawaii.”

  He didn’t react at first. Just kept staring at the fighting monkeys. She picked at the skin between her fingers, which seemed to be itching again. Maybe it was the dryness here. Oh, shit, she thought. I should have waited on this. Waited until he felt better. Was she just trying to make herself feel better? She cleared her throat. “Um, did you hear me? Chip?”

  “Oh yeah. Loud and clear. Who was it, one of your officers? That tall asshole. Mills, is that his name?”

  “Who, Matt? No. God, not him! Nobody aboard ship. Not anyone you know. A civilian.”

  He nodded, acknowledging, but still not really reacting. She rushed on. “Like I said, I didn’t know you were alive. And it didn’t last. Just one weekend, really. I wanted you to know. To get it out in the open, so we can talk about it.”

  One weekend she’d never forget, an idyllic time she’d always cherish in that secret corner of her brain no one else could access. At least not without the kind of imaging equipment Archipelago Systems and the CIA were rumored to be developing to interrogate spies. Maybe with that they could actually hear the swish of waves on a Hawaiian beach, feel the sand in the crack of your butt after a round of incredible sex …

  But Eddie just sat there on the bench, watching the monkeys and nursing his smoke. She scratched her head, fretting. Was he even registering her confession? She wa
nted to shake him. Hurt, being wounded, even rage would be better than this … passivity. This appalling apathy. It just wasn’t him. He just wasn’t whom she’d married: mercurial, funny, rambunctious. Sometimes a caveman, yeah, but always there. So finally she did shake him, gently, by the sleeve. “I need some kind of reaction, Eddie. Say you hate me, or whatever. What are you feeling?”

  “I don’t feel much of anything these days,” he murmured, and sighed. “To be real honest, I don’t feel much about you, either way. So you had like, an affair, while you thought I was dead. Well … fine. So did I.”

  She cocked her head, puzzled. “You had a … I don’t understand. I thought you were in that camp the whole time.”

  “I was.”

  “There were women there too?”

  “It wasn’t with a woman.”

  Her nod was a mindless reflex. She hovered between shock and numbness. “I’m not—I didn’t—I never knew you—had impulses. I mean, that way.”

  “I didn’t. Still don’t, I guess. Or maybe I do. That’s part of what I’ve got to figure out.” He sighed again, more deeply this time, and stubbed the cigarette out on the bench’s concrete arm. Flicked it to the ground. She bent and retrieved it, slipped it into a pocket. He jammed his fists into his parka again. “Along with a lot of other things,” he added. “Like, whether to stay in. Whether I’ll ever get back to flight status. Probably not, given what they found on my physical.”

  “Is that right? I didn’t know … You didn’t say what the results were.”

  He shook another cigarette out, but didn’t light it. Just stared at it. “And, I guess, whether we stay together.”

  She tried to keep her tone neutral. Unemotional. “Oh. I see.”

  “And until I get some of that uh, figured out, yeah, it might seem like I’m kind of, not all here. Or whatever.”

  She let the silence elongate. His words weren’t exactly a commitment, either way. But at least he was talking. She eased a breath out and patted his shoulder.

  They watched the monkeys for a while longer. Until he said, “What are your plans, Cher? Postwar, I mean?”

  “Uh, it’s kind of up in the air … Captain was just a wartime rank. I’m still a commander, officially. Savo’s in port, safe. She’s new, but a lot of the older ships will be decommissioned. I’d have six months left on my command tour if I hadn’t put her in commission in wartime. But now, who knows. I’m long overdue for a shore tour … but a lot of my peers are getting out. Hoping for civilian jobs.”

  “Which may or may not be there,” he muttered. He fished in his pockets again, probably for the lighter, and she almost said, You’re smoking too much, but didn’t. “I might need to stay in, at least for a while,” he added. “Given the medical crap I need to take care of. And the dental. They’ll probably give me a desk someplace. Limited duty. We’ll see. You?”

  “I’ll stay with the ship until they reassign me. I should call the detailer. There’s a lot going on right now in the surface community. Not just ships. Manpower issues, funding … end strength, promotion planning, billet base, bonus structures—” She stopped herself, realizing she was beginning to chatter. Weird, she felt nearly as scared now as she had in the Tsushima Strait.

  “Probably be a lot of early separations,” he said. “Might be good for you promotion-wise. But flying? For me, I think, it’s the end of the line.”

  “Uh, maybe. Like I said, a lot of changes are coming down the pike.” She hesitated. “Is there—you used to say, someday you wanted to play golf professionally. Any thoughts about—?”

  “Professionally?” He flexed his wrists again, the same habitual way he had since returning. “After they stamped on these, and broke them … No, I don’t think so. Might be able to coach. Yeah, I could probably coach something. Maybe college ball, college golf. Or teach flying somewhere. In light planes.”

  She thought about saying that might not be much of a challenge for him, but regarding his downturned face, the slump in his back, she might be wrong.

  But then, he’d only been back a few days. She had to give him time. He’d always loved golf. Had talked about it endlessly, to the point of boring her. She’d played a little, mainly when invited along on wardroom outings, but nowhere near his level. But the idea of coaching, or teaching something, that was new.

  “Or maybe politics,” he said.

  She flinched. “Politics?”

  “Just thinking about it. So all that”—he waved his hands, indicating something bigger than these mountains, but farther away—“all this, doesn’t happen again. That’s the most important thing now, I think.”

  He lit the fresh cigarette automatically, without looking down, as if not noticing what he was doing. They sat on the bench, watching as another clump of tourists arrived, chattering excitedly as the pond came into view.

  So were they together? She still didn’t know. But at least she’d told him. Gotten that off her chest, off her conscience. Not that she had any reason to feel guilty. But still.

  “Getting cold out here.” He shifted on the seat, turning a slightly remote gaze her way. “Thanks for the parka, but maybe I should’ve worn a sweater under it. How about you?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I guess.”

  “So, time to go?”

  He flexed his wrists again, winced again, and stood. Stretched, his hands to the small of his back. “Let’s try that big heated bathtub. That’s gonna feel good.” He almost sounded eager. The most animated he’d been since his return. About a hot bath. Still, it was something.

  She looked back one last time at the pool as they left. Remembering again what he’d said, and the incongruous wrongness of it. Reducing the horrific years just past to monkeys fighting over an increasingly fouled pool.

  No. That wasn’t why she’d fought. Why she’d risked defeat, and death, time after time. Why people, her people, had died, aboard the old Savo, aboard Jeonnam, Guam, all the other lost ships, all the wounded and burned in her task force. Why he had lost three years of his life, and ruined his health. It wasn’t like that. Couldn’t be like that. God, if he really believed that … but surely he couldn’t. No sane person could.

  “I’m really looking forward to a dip in that hot tub,” Chip said again, beside her.

  She turned back to him, dismissing her vision, and forced a smile. “Yeah. Me too.”

  And after a moment, tentatively, he took her hand. His fingers felt icy. His grip was weak. But he’d reached out, and touched her, finally.

  Yeah. Nothing in life was guaranteed. Nothing had been agreed between them. But … maybe it had been clarified, at least a little.

  They’d have to just let it all settle out. And then, see what came next.

  A few steps on, she linked her arm through his.

  18

  Republic of the Covenant, Missouri

  THE line was just as long today. Out around the block before the doors even opened. Not that they really ever closed; the clinic, set up in the basement of the building, was open around the clock.

  The bone-thin, spindly-legged, haggard woman in dirty scrubs dragged herself toward the back. Each lifted foot was a slog. A kerchief over her head hid the patches of bare scalp where her hair had fallen out.

  Nan had noticed the first effects—nausea, diarrhea, and loss of appetite—shortly after the shoot-out at the roadblock. At some point in their trip east, she and her escort of bikers had crossed a patch of fallout, or a shift in the wind had brought it down on them. Or maybe it was just from that initial blast of neutrons as she’d huddled in the stairway at Archipelago, arms locked over her skull, as the scarlet flash tore through her brain like a guillotine blade.

  Anyway, the when of her exposure probably didn’t really matter. Most people here, just south of the main strikes on the missile fields, had been toasted to some degree.

  She’d been here for weeks, but it seemed like months.

  Her escort, a Seattle gang who called themselves the Berzerkers, had gone
violent during a face-off with the militia. Barreling down the highway, convoying her truck in her escape from the stricken city, they’d disobeyed a shouted command to halt. Probably Ish, their leader, had expected to bulldoze through the roadblock, and signaled his men to open fire from the saddle fifty yards away. But the yokels hadn’t fled, and they’d been better armed than the bikers. The gang had been caught in a withering crossfire on the open highway, without cover other than their toppled Harleys and Indians.

  When the shooting ended the bikes were burning, and Ish, Rollvag, and the other gang members lay dead or wounded. The Covenanters didn’t seem interested in taking prisoners; a shotgun blast to the head finished off any lingering sufferers.

  When the fight was over, they’d dragged her out of the truck too. She’d screamed at them as they dragged her toward the heap of twitching corpses. But at last she’d convinced her new captors that she was a medic, not a combatant. That the crates in the refrigerator truck were essential to stemming the Central Flower virus spreading through the Midwest.

  “The Chinese flu, you mean?” one of them had said at last, and held out a hand to push away the muzzle of a shotgun.

  But they hadn’t let her go. Just shunted her upward in their own command structure until she and the crates of still-chilled LJL 4789 had ended up here, in this rural community hospital, which had been hastily converted into a frontline aid station.

  Since then, she’d been stuck here, helping Dr. Merian Glazer and his forcibly drafted hospital staff fight the outbreak. No one knew exactly how or why the Flower had gained a foothold here, and the Centers for Disease Control was no more welcome behind the Covenanter lines than any other federal agency. But, fortunately, the insurgents at least realized the disease had to be contained. Especially since radiation effects had weakened the people in the northern half of the area where they held sway, making them susceptible to any opportunistic infection.

  Now, as she let herself into the operating room, Glazer was bent over the operating table. A sweet reek of ether and alcohol filled the air. The generator hammered in the basement; the lights flickered. A muffled boom vibrated the air. Not far away: a missile from an HS drone, artillery? They knew very little down here about how that battle was going. Only that the enemy wore black uniforms and seemed to have unlimited ammunition.