by L. A. Cruz
“Seriously?”
“Seriously, Corporal.”
Dunning thumbed his helmet “We left the hand truck in cell twelve. We need a ten-second unlock.”
“No can do,” the control room said. “We just opened it, over.”
“This is Sergeant Dunning. Open the door. One more time. Don’t make me find the Colonel.”
The control-room voice sighed across the microphone and there was a rumble of static in the helmet.
“Roger that.”
“I’ll get him, you get the truck,” Dunning said.
The buzz traveled overhead and the deadbolt unlocked. Helia yanked the door open and Dunning charged into the cell. He moved in slow motion in the large suit as if he were trying to run on the moon. He cocked his arm back and before Manny could pick himself up off the ground, Dunning slammed him back against the wall. Helia winced at seeing her brother treated like that, but the count was already to four, the door was still open, and she couldn’t dilly-dally.
She ran in right behind Dunning, grabbed the hand truck, and wheeled it out, the count in her head now up to seven.
Manny's jaw hung loose from his face at a crooked angle. Dunning pushed back off the wall, turned around, and ran for the open door. But he was only a step away with two seconds left when Manny sprang off his broken haunches.
He landed on Dunning’s back and rode him right through the open door.
Chapter 29
Dunning, stumbled forward, Manny on his back. Behind them, the buzz traveled down the wall and the deadbolt jutted from the lock with no place to ram home.
The radio crackled. It was one of the Keepers on duty. “We’ve got a loose one!”
Manny chomped at Dunning’s neck. Helia couldn't help but think of the time that she brought home a pretty boy, so much gel in his hair that it looked as if he had just stepped out of a rainstorm. Manny had grunted when the boy rang the doorbell and he saw him through the screen. Later, he told Helia that she “deserved someone better, not someone who spent more time gettin painted than she did.”
Dunning, however was not that pretty boy. He was pretty yes, but still a damn good solider. With no thought to his own safety, he treated the concrete floor as if it were a wrestling mat and he flung himself backward. He landed flat on his back on top of Manny, crushing Manny's shoulder’s. The blades popped out and bled. Duning’s helmet crashed into Manny's face and broke his cheekbones.
Helia winced and looked away. Her brother had always been an attractive boy, her girlfriends always said so, but now it looked as if he had gone ten rounds with Pacquiao without raising a single fist in defense.
The two Keepers from the nearest wall ran to their aid.
Dunning floundered on his back, still on top of Manny, and raised a gloved finger. “Stay back! The both of you! You’re not dressed for this!”
They kept their distance, their thumbs on their radios.
Helia thumbed the button on the side of her helmet. “This is Corporal Crane. We’ve got a problem here.”
“What the hell is going on in there?” the control room said.
“We need another unlock on cell twelve. The bolt has engaged, but the door was open so it didn’t lock.”
“You better get this right, Corporal.”
“Roger that,” Helia said.
The buzz traveled down the wall again and the deadbolt retracted.
“It’s open,” Helia said.
Manny was still pinned under Dunning’s back. Dunning outweighed him by at least thirty pounds and Manny flailed as if a linebacker had landed on him.
“Push me back into the cell,” Dunning said.
Helia squatted in front of Dunning’s feet and grabbed the toes of his boots. Like the way she had seen football players push the sled, she chopped her feet and drove Dunning back into the cell. Trapped beneath him, there was a sickening crutch and scrape as Manny’s skin tore away from his shoulders and his spine and his hamstrings, and they left a gruesome, chunky trail on the concrete.
Once Dunning’s feet were past the line, Helia grabbed Dunning's hand and yanked him off her brother. Manny’s ruined body lay there on the pavement.
But Manny was a scrappy kid, always had been, and he wasn’t done yet. He planted a hand to try to push himself off the floor, but his elbow broke out at the joint—a compound fracture—and he collapsed. He snarled in pain, and tried to put the bone back into place.
The additional injury gave Dunning and Helia enough time to escape the cell and slam the door behind them.
One of the Keepers thumbed his radio. “Immediate lock on cell twelve.”
The buzz sang overhead and the deadbolt engaged.
“Are you secure now?” the control room said.
Dunning was out of breath. He looked at Helia, and put a hand on her shoulder. She couldn’t tell if he was congratulating her, showing affection, or resting.
“Roger that,” he said quietly.
In the equipment storage room, Helia unzipped the front of the suit and pulled her arms out. It was soggy inside, soaked with sweat. As she stepped out of the giant thing and let it crumble on the floor, it released a whiff of old sweat.
She hung it on the hook, her hands trembling. Now down to her tank top, the equipment was cold, were sweat chilling, and she shivered.
Beside her, Dunning undressed. He removed his helmet, his hair all matted, and hung up his own suit. He was down to his briefs and the ridges of his muscles glistened with sweat.
“Nice redemption,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
Helia made a fist to try to stop the shaking. “I think I need a shower.”
“Roger that.”
With her uniform in a bundle in her arms, held strategically to cover her chest—damn it was cold—Helia walked down the hallway to the living quarters. There, she stuffed her clothes into her laundry bag, pulled off her socks, and slipped her bare feet into her shower shoes.
Two bunks away, Dunning dropped a clean set of BDUs on his bed. He grabbed his dumbbells and did a set of curls to burn off the adrenaline.
Neither of them spoke. Helia didn’t bother watching him flex and grabbed her clean clothes, her towel, and headed for the showers.
In the bathroom, she hung her towel on the hook beside the shower stall, pulled the curtain aside, and stepped inside. She peeled off her sweaty underwear and turned on the water, not bothering to wait until it got warm. The cold water hit her and took her breath away and intensified her headache.
It was a new kind of penance.
All she could see was Manny’s caved-in face. Maybe if she had been a better big sister, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if she had paid more attention to him, protected him, helped him in school, this wouldn’t have happened.
She squeezed her eyes shut and let her eyelids empty. There was no one there to see it. That was her philosophy: Crying is okay in private. Private only.
She let the cold water wash off her tears. Finally, the water warmed and she relaxed and her headache eased. She turned to grab the soap, when the curtain moved, and someone slipped inside.
She gasped. Dunning. He was still wearing his briefs, but they were instantly wet and see-through.
“I think you have the wrong stall, Sergeant.”
He put a finger to her lips. “Tell me to go and I will go,” he whispered.
Helia could taste his finger. He tasted like sweat. His glistening body was only two inches from hers and the rain bounced off his chest and pelted her skin.
“You invited me, didn’t you?”
She stepped back from him. “What are you talking about?”
“You said, and I quote, ‘Let’s have sex in the shower.’”
“You were listening?”
He nodded.
“The mic was on?”
“Partially.”
Her heart pounded. “I think I said, ‘Let’s do it in the shower.’ That could have meant a lot of things.”
“Li
ke what?”
“Scrabble. Patty-cake. Maybe check each other for lice. You never know down here.”
He put his arm around her and found the small of her back with his fingers. “Really?”
“What else did you hear?”
“It sounded like you knew that inmate.”
“I don’t.”
“Is that why you froze up?”
“I don’t know him. I was just babbling. The same way you talk to a wounded comrade. You tell him everything’s going to be okay, right? You say, it’s gonna be fine, I’ll save you, that kind of thing, even though it’s all a lie.”
Dunning seemed to buy it. He pressed into her, mashing her breasts against his chest, pushing her up against the cold tile. “Tell me no.”
She wanted to forget about Manny. “No,” she whispered.
He stepped back. “No as in ‘no’? Or ‘no’ as in you won’t tell me no.”
“Jesus. Just kiss me,” she said.
He kissed her collarbone. His fingers went to her hip and then slid lower. She let her mouth hang open in ecstasy, water running down her chin and down her neck.
He kissed her hard on the bottom lip. Her hands trembled and grazed the hard ridges of his body. He was tense from the dumbbells and slick from the water. They were both still amped from the adrenaline and it felt as if she were not touching him, but touching his energy.
She circled his navel, dragged her thumb across the waistband of his boxers and then slipped her fingers inside and drew them off the crest of his hips. It revealed a Gothic number inked within the downward swoop of his pelvis.
One hundred and thirteen.
She couldn’t ignore it and it broke the moment. “Kind of a girly place for a tattoo.”
“I don’t discriminate,” Dunning whispered. “All parts of the body are fair game.”
“What’s it mean? No let me guess. A football number. You played high school football. You’re still reliving your glory days.”
“Not at all,” he said, still kissing her. “I’ll tell you about my number when you tell me about your snake.”
Her mouth went to his neck. “Fair enough.”
“It’s tradition here. I’m the one hundred and thirteenth Keeper to work in this dungeon.”
“Does everyone have them?”
“Yes,” he said and dragged his lips along the length of her collarbone. “From the beginning. Centuries worth. It makes us family.”
“Then we shouldn’t be doing this,” Helia said. “It’s incest.”
“Except you don’t have your number yet. You’re still a virgin.”
“Am I?” she said.
“A virgin Keeper.”
“What number should I get?”
He paused to do the counting in his head. “One hundred and eighteen. You need to get inked on your first leave.”
“Where?”
“Wherever you want.”
“You tell me.”
He traced her body with his eyes, drew his finger down her breast, and counted down three ribs and stopped there. He lightly traced the length of the rib away from her sternum. “There.”
“Why there?”
“I dunno. It’s Biblical.”
“God made woman from Adam’s rib,” Helia said. “Not the other way around.”
“Whatever,” he said and kissed the notch between her collarbones.
“That’s Catholic school for you.”
“So you’re a good Catholic girl?”
“The best,” she said, half-moaning.
“Now what about your snake? Did it slither out of the garden?”
“Shhhh,” she whispered and pulled his boxers off his hips to make him shut up.
Later, they sat opposite one another at one of the tables in the mess hall. Their trays were almost touching. They weren't speaking, just chewing orange slices.
Helia could feel his eyes. He was gazing at her. But she kept her eyes down on her tray. There was a pattern of scratches in the plastic. It was random, probably from hard scrubbing in the kitchen. She wasn’t trying to be a bitch, not intentionally. It had been good in the shower. Real good. So good that she had momentarily forgotten her brother, but right afterward, even before Dunning had toweled off, the guilt and the pain came roaring back with all the intensity of the shower head. With every blink, all she could see was Manny’s ragged body as he cowered in that cell alone.
Dunning nudged his tray at hers. “Is everything okay?”
Helia nodded. She popped an orange slice into her mouth and chewed it slowly, her eyes still on the tray.
“Who is Manny?”
“No one.”
“I heard you whisper the name.”
“Like I said, I was talking to myself. I said, ‘C’mon, man.’ I was trying to psyche myself up.”
“You talk to yourself a lot?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
She looked up. Their eyes met. She had no patience for small talk, not now. It had been good, but it was over. “I’m sorry, but I really do not feel like talking right now.”
Dunning put his hands up in innocence. “I’m just being friendly.”
As soon as she said it, she regretted it. Her mother used to tell her she was too blunt; it was unladylike. “Sorry. It’s not you.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“I just said ‘it’s not you.’”
“Yeah, but I’ve heard that one before. What’s wrong? Tell me,” he said and lowered his voice. “Was it bad?”
She was about to snap back and tell him to get over himself when a shadow came over the table, darkening their food.
She looked up.
“I’d like to see the two of you in my office,” Colonel Gates said. “Posthaste.“
Helia sat on the hard chair in the Colonel’s office. Dunning waited outside the door.
“I saw the tape,” Gates said.
“What tape?”
“The tape.”
She swallowed hard.
“As you know, that kind of thing is strictly forbidden here. We run a tight ship. We make Marines look like pigs. Is that understood?”
Helia’s heart thumped in her ears. She wasn’t sure if she felt angry or violated. They had video cameras in the showers? Is that what the Colonel did all day? Did he stay in his cabin and watch them like some kind of peeping pervert? And this whole time she thought that he was going to critique their procedure with the new arrival. But this…this was the stuff of court-martials.
“Yes, sir,” was all she could manage.
“I mean c’mon, Corporal. You think I’m stupid? I saw him do it. Right there on the tape. Word to the wise, if you want to do that kind of thing, you need to step your body back a little and block the camera.”
Helia closed her eyes.
“It’s not exactly something I can jerk off to, but it was inappropriate nonetheless. It’s the kind of thing that gets people killed around here.”
Helia closed her eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“It looked to me as if it was not reciprocated. Would you agree?”
Helia looked up. She didn’t want Dunning taking the fall for this. It would ruin his career. It was completely consensual.
“Sir?”
“Is that why you froze when you entered the interrogation room? Did Dunning throw you off your game?”
Now her timeline was all confused. “What exactly are you talking about, sir?”
“You know what I’m talking about! When Sergeant Dunning touched your pinky finger before you entered the interrogation room.”
Helia melted into the chair. “Oh. Yes, sir. I remember now.”
“So am I reading you right? There's nothing going on between you two, is there?”
“I hadn’t even remembered it, sir. That’s the truth.”
“Well, now that you remember it, maybe you can answer my question. Was it an unwanted advance or not?”
Helia hesitated. She fumble
d for the words. “I uh—think he was trying to get my attention, sir. Trying to give me reassurance.”
“That is hardly appropriate. You don’t see me taking Sergeant Lawless by the pinky finger whenever he needs some coaching, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Okay, you’re dismissed. I will deal with this.”
Helia stood to leave.
“And Corporal?”
Helia stopped at the door. “Yes, Colonel?”
“You did a fine job in cell twelve. Way to get a bad situation under control.”
“It was mostly Sergeant Dunning, sir.”
“Regardless, I’m glad to have you on the team. Don’t make me regret it.”
“No, sir, I won’t,” Helia said.
She opened the door and exited, now fearing that someone else—maybe the control room—had heard her words to Manny. God knows how often they were listening.
She walked straight past Dunning. She glanced back at him, her eyes wide and sad, and then she turned away and headed for the door.
Behind her, the Colonel stuck his head out of his cabin. “Sergeant Dunning, get your well-tanned ass in here.”
Helia shuffled to the far end of the cellblock. As she neared her post, she passed cell number twelve. Like leftover road kill after buzzards had taken all the good parts, the streak of her brother’s flesh was still on the concrete. She took a wide berth and slowed and glanced in the cell.
All she could see was his crouching form against the far wall. He was scratching at his own flesh. He stuck a finger in his mouth, almost infant-like, and ate himself.
She looked away in sadness and kept going. She nodded to the Keeper whose post she was taking. Josh or something. He rotated to the left side and then she turned on her heels and stood with her back against the wall and looked out at the row of cells.
She stood there at parade rest. Even sullen, she kept the proper posture. It was one way to stay in control.
She thought about when her brother came home with his first A. It was in junior high. Although he had achieved it in gym class, it was still his biggest accomplishment, and he held the teacher's progress report proudly as he stepped off the bus and entered the house, eager to show her father that his body had finally come into its own.
