Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  “I don’t do police work,” Goose replied. “I’m here to help my captain maintain a strong position inside this city and resist occupation by enemy forces.”

  Winters relaxed a little in his chair. “Looks like I’m keeping you from your job, Sergeant Gander. I’m not the enemy.”

  “Part of my job responsibilities here includes running security and identifying potential threats,” Goose said.

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  Goose ticked points off on his fingers. “You don’t have any ID. You were heavily armed for a civilian, even under these circumstances. You were in motion in this city, carrying out your own agenda when common sense would have dictated that you hole up until the worst of this situation was over. You don’t come across like any photojournalist I’ve ever met, and I’ve come across a lot of them since the op here began. You’re demanding to leave immediately instead of taking comfort in the fact that—at present—you’re safe from attack.”

  “That’s all circumstantial. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You were in the same area as me,” Goose said softly. “And you know my name.”

  Hesitation froze Winters for an instant. He tried to cover. “You gave me your name.”

  “Private,” Goose said, raising his voice slightly.

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Barnett looked directly at the back of Winters’s head.

  Goose knew the man felt the private’s stare because he squirmed uncomfortably and couldn’t resist a glance over his shoulder. “Did I give this man my name?” Goose asked.

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Did anyone else in this room give this man my name?”

  “No, Sergeant. I’ve been doing the only talking in the room.”

  Goose shook his head and maintained eye contact with Winters. “No one gave you my name.”

  “Maybe we met somewhere before,” Winters suggested. “You said yourself that you’ve seen a lot of media people. We probably met in Glitter City or possibly when I was doing some shooting on the front line.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “Sure you did. You just don’t remember me.” Winters gestured to his face. “I bet I look like raw hamburger right now. If you’d seen me before this happened you might have remembered me.”

  “Before what happened?”

  Winters didn’t miss a beat, flowing smoothly into the question Goose thrust in the middle of the conversation. “Before I was beaten up and robbed.”

  “Did you see the person or persons who did this?”

  “No. It was dark. Maybe he followed me.”

  “He?”

  Shrugging, Winters said, “He, she, it. Pick your pronoun, Sergeant.”

  “Followed you from where?”

  “The bar.”

  “You were in a bar?”

  “I told you I was in a bar.”

  “No,” Goose said, “you didn’t.” He paused. “What bar would that be?”

  “I don’t remember. Some hole-in-the-wall that survived the bombing.”

  “Until tonight.”

  “That’s right,” Winters agreed testily. “Until tonight.”

  “I don’t forget faces,” Goose said. “I’ve never seen you until tonight. But I find it interesting that you know who I am.”

  Winters didn’t say anything.

  That, Goose knew, showed training. A normal individual caught in a lie tended to try to overexplain or modify his or her answer to take care of any discrepancies. Winters was trained to refuse the kneejerk reflex.

  “Did you see who attacked you?” Goose asked.

  “No,” Winters replied. “I told you that.”

  The answer came too quick and too certain. Goose’s instincts told him the man had lied again. “Do you think whoever did it meant to kill you?”

  “No. Probably just wanted to get the camera and pistols.”

  “And the film,” Goose said. The answer wasn’t a complete lie. Winters—and Goose doubted that was the man’s real name—knew who had attacked him but not if that person intended to kill him.

  “Yeah.”

  Goose surveyed Winters’s face. “That’s a lot of damage for a guy who was just intending to rob you. Someone who spends that much time at that kind of beating usually intends it as personal.”

  “It could have been a rival photojournalist,” Winters said. “Things have gotten crazy in this city.”

  “A rival journalist who decided to take on a guy carrying two pistols.” Winters nodded and decided to stay with his lie. “A really desperate photojournalist who’d broken his own camera or didn’t get the pictures of the attack that I did.”

  Raised voices sounded out by the main desk. Goose glanced in that direction and saw the two Rangers posted at guard confronting a tall athletic man with dark hair going gray at the temples. He wore a tailored canvas jacket covered in dust and splintered wood. He stood toe-to-toe with the Rangers, obviously not intimidated.

  Winters started to get up again. Goose noticed the look of recognition in Winters’s eyes.

  Barnett dropped a big hand on Winters’s shoulder. “Siddown, Mikey. You haven’t been dismissed yet.” He shoved the smaller man back into the chair with a thump.

  Goose walked to the doorway. “Something wrong here, Private?” He locked eyes with the civilian.

  The Rangers stood with their M-4A1s at the ready, far enough back from the man that he couldn’t impede their ability to use the assault rifles. Three men in lightweight jackets flanked the tall man. All of them had flat-eyed stares that reflected only cold dispassion. Goose had seen the same lack of personal attention in the eyes of trained guard dogs.

  “This man says he wants to speak with you,” one of the privates answered.

  Goose stared the man in the eye. “Did he ask for me, Private? Or did he ask for whoever was in charge?”

  “He asked for you, sir. By name.”

  Goose pinned the tall man with his gaze. “Did he identify himself?” “No, Sergeant.”

  The man regarded Goose with cold disdain. “You think maybe we can cut the chitchat, Sergeant Gander?”

  “Sure,” Goose said. “Tell me who you are, prove it, and we’ll negotiate how chitchat-free we can become.”

  “Maybe we can talk in private,” the man suggested.

  Goose walked by the desk, not bothering to try to clear the security office as he guessed the man was hoping he would do. The Rangers held their post. The three bodyguards followed their leader.

  “You said in private,” Goose reminded. “If you start playing the intimidation game with me, I’ll fill this area with Rangers and conduct this conversation with a bullhorn while we try to figure out who you are.”

  Irritably, the man waved off his three associates. They retreated reluctantly but interposed themselves between the man and Goose and the Rangers posted at guard. The psychological impact was clear: Goose was cut off from his men; any help he expected on that front would have to go through them first.

  Goose held his M-4A1 comfortably by its pistol grip. One step would put the man between him and his three bodyguards, partially blocking their fields of fire. In addition—judging from the bulky heft of the man’s upper body, Goose was willing to wager that the man wore some kind of body armor.

  The three men looked at each other wordlessly, then relaxed their stances. They no longer looked as threatening.

  Goose figured that his psychological impact was clear, too. Pistols just didn’t measure up against an assault rifle in an armed confrontation. Okay, boys, all the marbles are on the table. Let’s see how the ante goes.

  Sunshine Hills Cemetery

  Outside Marbury, Alabama

  Local Time 2221 Hours

  The earth from the grave site turned easily. Delroy removed shovelful after shovelful of dark loam, adding to the tall heap to one side. Most of the dirt stayed in place, but occasional trickles ran back into the deep hole he’d made.

  Rain had saturated the a
rea for days. When the gravediggers had cut the hole in the ground and filled it back in, the replaced soil was free of rocks and roots. The rain had helped when Delroy first started digging, but now the constant flow of water into the open hole hindered his progress. Black rain that barely reflected his flashlight beam pooled at the bottom of the hole, rendering the earth the consistency of soup if he didn’t dig deep and hard beyond the surface.

  Delroy’s back and arms and legs ached from the unfamiliar exertion. Back on Wasp, he kept in shape, playing pickup basketball and handball with the other officers and enlisted. Three times a week he went through the weight machines. Five times a week he jogged Wasp’s landing deck. Sometimes he jogged in the morning, starting before daybreak and ending when the sun crested the eastern skies, seeming to come up out of the sea or from whatever landmass that lay to the east of the ship.

  But he’d never before dug a grave.

  Or dug one up, he amended silently. He took a fresh grip on the shovel and thrust it deep into the earth again. Sweat covered his flesh under the slicker and his wet clothes. Thankfully, the chore also warmed him against the cold chill of the night.

  He swept the shovel aside and dumped the latest load atop the hill of dirt that was slowly but surely turning to mud. The drowned earth under his feet sucked at his boots as he shifted.

  The hole was three feet by three feet so far, and nearly as deep. The work had gone quickly, but his reserves were going just as quickly.

  Emotion further exhausted him, growing stronger and stronger the deeper he went, wearing him out even more quickly.

  Relentless, he thrust the shovel back into the grave. The blade struck an unyielding surface with a clank.

  Delroy’s heart leaped into his throat as he realized that he might have already reached his son’s casket. Many graves weren’t truly six feet deep. He froze. His stomach churned, filled with acid, and a rancid taste coated his mouth.

  “God help you, Delroy,” he whispered to himself. “Are you ready for this?”

  Terrence had died in the Middle East five years ago, his squad ambushed by terrorists the U.S. Marines had gone to disenfranchise from the local populace that had kept them hidden. The wounds Terrence had died from had necessitated a closed-coffin ceremony.

  Delroy had never gotten the chance to say good-bye to his son properly, never had the chance to kiss him good-bye one last time. But he’d also been spared the harsh sight of seeing Terrence dead. All Delroy had seen was a flag-draped coffin that scarcely seemed big enough to hold his boy who had been so big in life.

  Raw pain surged through the chaplain anew. Just when he had decided that he had never before hurt so much in his life and surely couldn’t ever hurt that much again, the thought of seeing his son’s badly maimed corpse hit him with the unstoppable force of a battleship under speed.

  He reeled and swayed, holding onto the shovel with both hands. “God, help me.”

  Only the drumming rain and the low whisper of the wind washing through the trees answered him.

  Delroy felt more alone and cut off from the world than he ever had. It was even worse than when he had returned to his quarters after he’d received notification of Terrence’s death. He’d been at a new posting, with no one really close to him, bereft of family and friends until the helicopter had started him on his trip back home.

  Lightning blazed against the sky. When the thunder came immediately afterward, the basso boom sounded right above him. The vibration reached through his whole body, jarring him solidly.

  Looking into the dark sky above the small bubble of pale yellow illumination afforded by the flashlight lying on the other side of the grave, Delroy took a long, ragged breath. “You took him from me, Lord. I wasn’t ready to let him go, but You took him anyway. He was just a boy.” His words caught as fresh tears filled his eyes. “My boy. You had no cause to do that. I’d worked long and hard for You, and You took him from me anyway.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, but there were no answers in the dark sky.

  Delroy wiped the fresh tears from his face. “I want answers, God. I want to know what is going on. I want to know if the Rapture really did occur or if I’ve been fooling myself about everything my daddy taught me.”

  That’s not true, Delroy told himself. You know that’s not true. Here you stand, lying to the Lord and you’re standing in your own son’s open grave to do it.

  Realization of what he was doing filled Delroy with weakness. He tried to hang on to his resolve. “God, forgive me. I beg You. But I’m weak. I know that You’ve raptured Your church and that I’ve been found wanting, but I need to know—” His voice broke and he couldn’t go on. He felt the hard surface grate against the shovel’s blade as he shifted. “I just—I just need to know if my boy made it to You. That’s all, God. I just need to know that You’ve taken him into Your embrace and are watching over him because now I can’t.”

  He turned his attention back to the ground. Placing his foot on the shovel, he thrust again, changing the angle. This time the shovel slid freely, rasping along an object hidden in the muddy earth. As he turned the shovel over, he saw that what he’d found was a rock.

  The rock was flat and smooth, obviously one that had spent years at the bottom of a creek bed or a river. Now here it was, where no rocks were supposed to be, miles from any creek or river. The rock was large, as big as a hubcap, and at least thirty or forty pounds in weight.

  Words from the past, from a talk Delroy had shared with his father, came back to him. At eight or nine years old, Delroy’s curious mind had constantly created questions for his father to answer.

  “But how do I know to believe in Jesus and the Lord, Daddy?” young Delroy had asked. They’d sat on a creek bank only a few miles from the church and the little house out back where Josiah Harte preached the Word of the Lord and raised his family. They both held cane fishing poles Pastor Crook had made as presents the previous Father’s Day. Pastor Crook had trained Josiah in the ways of the church.

  Josiah had worn the old felt hat festooned with handmade flies and lures that his wife said she hated because it made him look unkempt. Etta Harte had prided herself on her sewing and ironing, and she’d always made sure her man looked his best when he went out her door. Josiah had worked his line, setting the hook into the deep water beneath a log where Delroy had spotted bass only the day before.

  “You don’t know how to believe, Son,” Josiah had replied.

  “I know, Daddy,” Delroy agreed. “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know how to believe. So how am I supposed to learn to believe?”

  “You can’t learn to believe.”

  Delroy had fumbled with that thought for a moment or two, testing it for inconsistencies. “Well, you did.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then how come you believe in the Lord so all-fired much if you didn’t learn how?”

  Josiah had turned to his son with a big grin. He rubbed a hard hand across Delroy’s head. Working with fences and lumber and occasional construction to help out with congregation members’ projects over the years had left thick yellow calluses on his hands.

  “You sure do a powerful lot of thinking, Son,” Josiah had said.

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I intend to do.”

  “Thinkin’ ain’t always good for a man. That’s one thing you can purely do too much of if you ain’t careful.”

  “You always tell me to think about what I’m doing.”

  Josiah had shrugged in resignation. “Well, Son, now I guess that would be about right. Your momma’s always after me about that, wanting me to think more. So I guess maybe you an’ me come by it righteous enough. But we didn’t come out here to think. We came to fish.”

  “I know, Daddy. I just can’t help myself.”

  Josiah had sighed, and even then Delroy had known his father was resigning himself to another interrogation. “No, I suppose you can’t. So what did you want to know?”

  “How’d you get to
learn how to believe so much?”

  Josiah had hesitated a moment. “You might not be ready for this, Delroy.”

  “You saying I ain’t old enough, Daddy?” Age hadn’t been something that Delroy let stand in his way in those days. His mother had taught him the word precocious because she was always calling him that and he’d asked Lutie the butcher what it meant one day while buying a chicken for the family stewpot.

  “I didn’t say you weren’t old enough.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “God talks to you at different times in your life,” Josiah had said. “All you got to do is listen to Him.”

  “I been listening. But He ain’t said a word.”

  “Maybe now just ain’t the time. You’re still a little young.”

  “So God don’t like talking to kids?”

  Josiah had frowned long and hard. “God loves His children. Don’t you ever go lettin’ nobody tell you any different.”

  His father’s swift and fierce reaction had scared Delroy a little. “No, sir. I won’t.”

  Josiah had tried to return to his fishing, but Delroy knew that he’d come too far for his father to simply leave the matter lie. Delroy bided his time, knowing his father would get back to the conversation even though he was a little uncomfortable with it.

  “I didn’t learn,” Josiah finally said after long minutes of silence.

  “Didn’t learn what, Daddy?” Delroy had tried to appear innocent.

  “I didn’t learn to believe. I chose to.”

  “Chose to what?”

  “Chose to believe in the Lord God Almighty. Ain’t that what we’re talking about here?”

  “Yes, Daddy. But you ain’t giving me no answers.”

  “I’m givin’ you all the answer there is. All the answer a man should ever need.”

  “Well, then, I must be stupid because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Josiah had never liked it when Delroy called himself stupid. At eight or nine, the threat of thinking of himself as stupid was always offered as bait to get his father to open up more when he became reluctant about a discussion topic.

  “You see?” Josiah said. “That’s why I said you should wait on this here conversation.”