by Noah Mann
“So you have a piano player issuing commands,” Schiavo said. “I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know I’m not some born to kill Army lifer out to piss vinegar in your direction for the hell of it. I’m a piano player who happened to be one of the few who stuck around to keep taking orders when everything went to hell. Eventually I was told to step away from the keys and grab my M4, so that’s what I did. Then I was on an Air Force transport that left me and others like me in Hawaii. And you know what we did there?”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t surf,” Neil said.
“We waited,” she said. “And were split up into units. Every lowly lieutenant was given their own command. Five hell raisers and a louie that played piano. That’s what my unit was. Then we trained. It was back to basic infantry. We didn’t even know what for, but I made a promise to myself right then that the person leading my men anywhere was not going to be the piano player—it was going to be the warrior.”
“That’s one hell of a personal narrative,” I said.
“I hoped you’d think so,” Schiavo said. “Because if I revert to the rulebook at times and seem like an a-hole, it’s because sometimes I’m afraid that I should still be playing piano. Okay?”
She’d used a term I hadn’t expected—afraid. Fear was a common emotion, even in those who wore the uniform and served their country. Cops felt it. Boxers in the ring knew it. Crabbers on a boat in stormy seas, as well. But rarely did they admit to it to virtual strangers.
Lieutenant Angela Schiavo, in her own way, was offering up an explanation as apology. And hoping that we would take it to heart.
“Fair enough,” I said.
Schiavo nodded.
“And I’ll try to remember that you haven’t been riding out this hell in some cushy civilian nirvana,” she said.
She needed to offer no more explanation. No more apology.
“We won’t share any of this with your men,” Elaine said.
Schiavo smiled lightly at the assurance.
“They know,” she said, then looked to the crashed Sea Stallion, worry and hope sharing the space in her gaze. “There’ll be a radio in Ketchikan. Every garrison has one.”
She looked back to us, those eyes filled only with certainty now.
“And we’ll get you to Skagway,” she added, pure promise about her as she spoke. “It’s still your boat, still your destination. We’re just borrowing it for a while along the way.”
And that was it. Some understanding had settled in between the lieutenant and us. As for myself, I fully appreciated what it was she was charged with accomplishing, and, along with that, the pressures to perform that weighed upon her. Despite any societal changes, she was a woman in a man’s army, evidenced by the makeup of the unit she led. I didn’t know if that disparity pushed her to work harder, or be harder, but, so far, it hadn’t exposed any deep flaw in her ability to lead.
And I hoped, for all our sakes, that it would not.
For the next hour we all pitched in, carrying what had been salvaged from the Sea Stallion down to the dock and loading it on the Sandy. She was heavier now, with both more supplies and more live bodies aboard, which, we discovered, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a craft designed to operate with its tanks filled with caught fish. She rode more solid, I felt, as we pulled away from the dock and out into the channel.
Ketchikan was just twenty miles away.
Thirteen
It was good to have others to pilot the Sandy. And especially good to have someone, in Acosta, who actually had experience on similar craft. He steered us expertly along the eastern shore, islands to our west. He’d commented after taking the wheel that it felt little different from his uncle’s cod boat in his birth state of Massachusetts. That was the home he’d left behind when joining the Army shortly before the blight made its first appearance in a Polish potato field. Now, like the rest of us, it was the home he’d likely never know again.
There was another reason to appreciate having Acosta at the wheel, and the others to back him up. It gave us time. Elaine, Neil, and me. Time to sit on deck near the stern of the vessel and have a moment to talk. Away from any who might hear.
“What if there is a radio they can use in Ketchikan?”
Neil wondered that aloud, glancing toward the wheelhouse. Acosta was there, Lorenzen and Hart with him on watch. Schiavo, Westin, and Enderson were bunked out below, catching what rest they could before the sun rose.
“If they can make contact with some higher authority, what about what we found?” my friend asked. “And the notebook?”
“They could pass on what we learned,” Elaine said. “On how to beat the blight.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “They could.”
Neil and Elaine both puzzled at my wariness.
“But you don’t want them to,” Elaine said.
“We may have the holy grail here,” I said. “What if we get to Skagway and this evacuation isn’t as innocuous as the good lieutenant makes it sound?”
“Bargaining chip,” Neil said, understanding.
“If our people want out, and someone doesn’t want to allow that, then we have something to give them,” I said. “Or something to withhold.”
Elaine looked toward the wheelhouse, then back to us.
“You don’t trust them?”
“I don’t know them,” I said. “None of us do. I’m just not in the mood to blindly put my faith in someone because they wear a uniform.”
“Ben wore a uniform,” Neil said.
My friend’s gaze bore hard into me. I did remember that. And I remembered what Colonel Ben Michaels had done. What he’d sacrificed so that my friend could live. Neil knew I would never speak of that. I hadn’t with Elaine, and I wouldn’t even hint of what I’d seen. That was a secret I would take to my grave.
“We were with him for a long time,” I reminded Neil. “We’ve been acquainted with these people for a few hours.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Neil said. “I’m just suggesting there may come a time when we need to trust them.”
“They did save us,” Elaine said. “But I agree with you. We keep it—”
She never had a chance to finish. The boat tipped severely to port as Acosta steered hard right, taking us into a small cove, the motion tossing us against the side rail, the low rise of its wooded structure all that kept us from tumbling into the black water.
“What the hell...” Elaine cursed, getting to her knees as the boat straightened out and slowed, engines reversing to bring us to a stop.
Neil and I got to our feet just as the door to the wheelhouse swung outward, Hart leaning out, weapon in hand and a single finger to his lips. Behind him I could see Schiavo, Enderson, and Westin coming up from below, M4s at the ready. The lieutenant conversed with Acosta for a moment, then came out onto deck.
“They saw a light ahead,” Schiavo told us. “On a small island.”
“Not a reflection?” I asked. “The water plays tricks on you.”
She shook her head, complete confidence in her men.
“It’s there,” she said. “We’re out of sight in this cove. I’m sending a patrol to shore to scout ahead overland. That point that’s shielding us will give a decent vantage to scan the way ahead and see what that light is.”
“Who’s going?” Neil asked.
“I’m about to decide that,” Schiavo answered, then turned to head back into the wheelhouse.
My suggestion stopped her before that could happen.
“Let us scout it.”
Schiavo looked to me, partly puzzled, partly amused.
“This is actually what we train for,” she said.
“I know,” I told her. “But this is actually what we’ve been doing for months. Out where threats exists among the completely innocuous.”
It was weighing the man walking along a deserted highway holding a dead cell phone to his ear against the little girl on a tricycle who was a distraction that allowed her father
to almost impale my best friend. We’d seen and felt and dealt with unexpected oddities of all sorts. And we’d learned that, sometimes, just giving these things a wide berth was the best course of action. My suggestion to Schiavo was based only on that understanding. And on the reality that she, and her men, were warriors, each and every one ready for a fight.
And maybe too willing to seek one.
The lieutenant considered my suggestion for a moment, eyeing each of us, up and down, in some silent appraisal. What she spent the most time on, though, were our eyes. How they remained fixed on her gaze. Locked on. Confident.
Even haunted.
“You’ve seen things,” Schiavo said.
“All of us,” I confirmed.
She weighed what I’d offered, then nodded.
“Sergeant...”
Lorenzen came out of the wheelhouse at his lieutenant’s call.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Schiavo gestured to us with a nod.
“Set them up with the night sight.”
* * *
We took the small dinghy lashed to the deck near the stern and paddled the short distance to shore.
“How far off is this light we’re scouting?” Elaine asked.
Acosta had given me an estimation before we shoved off from the Sandy.
“A mile when first spotted,” I said. “Make it half that by the time we reach the point.”
The point was just a stubby peninsula jutting out into the channel. As Schiavo had thought, it would provide a perfect vantage point to observe whatever it was her men had seen from the wheelhouse.
“Feet dry,” Neil said, his last stroke with the paddle beaching the dinghy’s bow on the flat and rocky shore.
We climbed out, boots splashing through a few inches of surf before we tied off the dinghy and began working our way up the shore. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before we reached the point and crept low along its ridge to a spot where a pair of leaning boulders formed a near perfect V which we could peer through.
“Go ahead, eagle eye,” I told Elaine.
Neil passed her the thermal binoculars and she took a position at the base of the boulders, turning the device on as Sergeant Lorenzen had shown her. The barest glow escaped past the cups shrouding the eyepieces, a muted grey white light splashed upon her cheeks. She made adjustments to the focus and the zoom, studying the distant view for a moment before easing her face away from the binoculars and turning them off.
“We can sail right past,” she said, handing the hunk of advanced optics back to Neil and standing.
Her desire to depart abruptly stood stark against her usual sober and methodical approach to almost any situation.
“What is it?” Neil asked.
She glanced quickly to him, but gave no answer, nor any hint of explanation.
“Let’s get back to the boat,” she said.
Neil looked to me, then turned the thermal binoculars back on once more, about to bring them to his face when Elaine seized his arm.
“Let’s just get back to the boat,” she reiterated.
Her grip remained on his arm until he turned the device off once again and stowed it in its case.
“Come on,” Elaine said, then started back long the point’s sloping southern face on her way to the shore.
“What the hell did she see?”
I thought on my friend’s question, but I had no specific answer. No real guess, either. What Elaine must have focused in on across the water had to have disturbed her without raising any real fear. We’d all seen so much already that I wondered what might have affected her the way it had.
“Are you coming?” she asked, pausing to look back when Neil and I hadn’t yet moved from our position on the point.
“Yeah,” I said.
I looked to my friend, and he started off, following Elaine. A moment after him, I did, as well. Back at the dinghy we pushed off and paddled back to the Sandy.
“What is it?” Schiavo asked as we climbed back aboard.
Enderson and Hart stowed the dinghy and listened for an answer to their leader’s question. None actually came.
“We can go on,” Elaine said.
Schiavo puzzled briefly at the oblique reply.
“It’s safe,” Elaine assured her, offering everyone on deck a quick look, her gaze finally settling on me. “I’m sure.”
She walked away then, heading into the wheelhouse and below deck.
“That’s not what I was expecting,” Schiavo said, looking to me.
It wasn’t what I’d anticipated, either, but I didn’t share that with the lieutenant. Instead, I added my assurance to that of Elaine.
“If she says it’s all right, then it is.”
My own promise, offered in the blind, was enough to move Schiavo, if not convince her entirely.
“Acosta, get us moving.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sergeant, I want shooters on the bow.”
“Westin, Enderson, warm up your trigger fingers,” Lorenzen said, carrying out his lieutenant’s order.
“Elaine wouldn’t say it was safe if it wasn’t,” I told Schiavo.
“I had friends who were told the same thing before they were blown up while meeting with tribal elders in Afghanistan,” Schiavo said. “So it’s a good idea to be ready to kill anything you see.”
She said no more, simply taking the thermal binoculars back from Neil and joining Acosta in the wheelhouse.
“I hope this doesn’t go south,” Neil told me.
“Yeah,” I said, then joined the others in the wheelhouse as the Sandy started to move.
* * *
We pulled around the point and into the channel. Immediately we all could see the light ahead, flickering small in the darkness.
“Keep us at a distance,” Schiavo ordered.
“Yes, ma’am,” Acosta acknowledged.
He steered the Sandy right, hugging the eastern shore as close as he could without grounding her on the bottom displayed on the boat’s instruments. Just forward, through the windows, I could see Westin and Enderson kneeling behind the low, solid rail that surrounded the bow. They had their M4s up and ready, eyes to the compact scopes mounted atop each. They would see only minimal definition at this distance. Schiavo, though, would take in a much clearer picture as she brought the thermal binoculars to her eyes and activated them.
Just a few seconds later she lowered them and looked to me. Just a dim glow from the instruments filled the wheelhouse. Hardly enough to see by. But in that wash of muted light I could tell that some of the color had drained from the lieutenant’s face.
“She was right,” Schiavo said.
The lieutenant handed the binoculars to Lorenzen and went below decks. He scanned the scene she’d just appraised and leaned out the wheelhouse window and told his shooters to stand down.
“What did she see?” Neil asked.
The sergeant turned and thought for a moment, then handed the binoculars over. My friend stepped close to the wheelhouse front window and focused in on the scene. He let his gaze linger on what was out there for just a moment before he, too, wanted to look no more.
“Neil...”
He looked to me. More a glance, actually, furtive and grim. I reached out and took the binoculars from him and took my own turn surveying the scene, stepping to the window, Acosta at the wheel to my right, the island with the small fire at its southernmost point close now off the port side of the boat. It took just a moment to do what others had done before me and dial the focus and zoom so that what lay out there in the night became clear.
I wished it hadn’t.
A gauzy mist hovering just above the water softened some of what I saw in the grey and white hues imparted by the thermal sensors. They registered heat, and cold, and the reflectivity of the former on pooled liquid. Liquid like blood.
That, I knew, was what shimmered on the ground near the fire. A wide pool with sparkles of heat twinkling upon its glassy
surface. Next to it a saw lay. A bow saw, what someone might use to remove limbs from a tree. Or other limbs.
Near that cutting instrument a man lay. Even in the digitally enhanced interpretation of his form I could see that he was near wasted away. Skin and bones in monochrome. I could also see that one arm below the elbow was missing, and from that point of amputation a clear path of shining liquid could be traced to the larger pool.
That was horror enough, I thought. But there was more.
Over the fire the man had constructed a simple cooking apparatus. A stick leaned over the low blaze, propped up at an angle by a mound of flat stones, its base held in place by still more rocks. At its end, impaled on the sharpened point, the man’s severed arm, charred and shriveled, was suspended above the licking flames.
Desperation...
That was the only term I could manage upon seeing what I was. It was the worst combination of what I’d experienced over the previous months. Man turned to cannibal, and the mind twisted to bring that horror upon one’s self. Here the crazed individual had considered his action with some logic, it appeared, preparing a fire, and a manner of cooking a meal, before taking the blade to his flesh and bleeding out before he could find sustenance in his own sacrifice.
I lowered the binoculars. Lorenzen was looking at me. No, it was more than that. He was watching me. Maybe expecting some reaction. Some overt expression of horror. I don’t know what he saw upon my face as I handed the binoculars back, but the manner about him softened. For that moment, in that exchange between us, he was not a soldier. He was just a member of the human race.
“Hell of a world,” the sergeant said, his voice cracking slightly.
I nodded and headed for the stairs.
Fourteen
I found Elaine in the boat’s cramped dining area, Schiavo in the attached galley, pouring steaming water from a kettle into two cups with teabag strings hanging over their lips.
“Care for some?” the lieutenant asked when she saw me at the bottom of the steep stairs.
“No. Thanks.”
