Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  Outside the courtyard area, Danielle walked south, following the natural boundary of the block. Even in the downtown area where she was, most buildings stood no more than two or three stories tall. None of them had windows. The glass had either been shattered during the first attacks or had been broken out later by soldiers or occupants so they couldn’t turn into deadly shrapnel during the next attack.

  An earthmover, borrowed from a Sanliurfa construction business, dug a great gaping hole in the park across the street. The claw scrabbled back and forth with loud clanks that echoed between the buildings. A line of trucks bearing the dead that had been gathered so far waited to dump the bodies into the mass grave.

  Other squads dug more mass graves around the city.

  The heat, Danielle knew from the reports she’d given, spread disease from rotting corpses quickly. If the military teams hadn’t been ordered to delay Syrian occupation of the city and were on their way out, they probably wouldn’t have bothered with the dead.

  Whenever possible, American dead were buried apart from the Turkish people and military as well as the U.N. forces. If things went well and the Syrians were forced back into their country, American military would return to the city and claim their dead. Forensics would allow them to ship the bodies home to families to inter at Arlington or in family burial grounds.

  For a moment, Danielle stopped and watched the mass burial. Several Turkish families clung to the sides of the military trucks. Soldiers gently but forcibly removed some of them who were overcome with emotion at their losses or simply wanted to know if their family members were among the dead.

  It was horrible, and Danielle faulted herself because she was able to keep her distance from those involved. Finally, unable to bear the impersonal sounds of the earthmover as the scoop carved the grave, Danielle turned away. Farther down the street, she saw a man loading a small car. Evidently he had lost faith in the military to hold their positions.

  A woman who was probably his wife came forward. She cried openly, one knotted fist in her mouth. She carried a child’s car seat. Her husband joined her. He looked at the car seat and shook his head. Even though Danielle couldn’t hear their voices over the sounds of the earthmover and the truck engines, she knew the couple was arguing.

  The man tried to take the car seat from the woman. She held on to it desperately and shook her head. Tears streamed from her eyes and pain wrinkled her face like a prune.

  Taking the car seat, the man spoke softly. The woman shook her head, tucking her chin against her chest and not meeting his gaze. He spoke again, more harshly this time because the tendons stood out on his neck.

  For a moment Danielle thought the argument was only over the fact that there wasn’t room in the tightly packed car for the seat. Suddenly she noticed that there was no baby or small child in evidence. Then she realized why there was no child: all the children were gone, taken away by whatever forces had made them vanish.

  Danielle took a picture of the couple arguing over the child’s seat. The scene was intimate and personal, but Danielle knew the same confusion had to be felt around the globe.

  First Sergeant Gander’s son had disappeared, too. Danielle had learned that Goose had a son through the bio information Lizuca was able to get from someone in Waycross, Georgia, Goose’s hometown. Danielle hadn’t been able to bring up his son’s disappearance the few times she’d talked with the sergeant, and she didn’t think he would have talked about his boy if she had.

  She put her camera away again and kept moving. Walking through the smoke that clogged the streets, seeing all the debris from the broken buildings and the shattered trees and burned vehicles, she missed the RV. Inside the Adventurer, she felt removed from the threat and the agonizing aftermath of the attack.

  Before she knew it, tears ran down her face as she thought about the young couple and the car seat and the mass grave surrounded by all the upset family members and friends. And First Sergeant Goose Gander who had lost a son and seemed at odds with his superior officer over the matter of the CIA team.

  She’d noted that in the hallway. She didn’t miss much. From everything she’d read about the 75th, Captain Remington and First Sergeant Gander had served successfully together for years. Maybe they had their differences of opinions during downtime or when they were on a routine peacekeeping mission, but Danielle didn’t buy the possibility that the pressure of the war zone had put them at odds.

  The only catalyst she could point to was the CIA man she couldn’t identify. Yet. But she was willing to bet she could change that.

  She took her sat-phone from her chest pouch and punched in the number. Military vehicles and civilian transport rolled by in the street, crunching through debris. In addition to the number she had for Lizuca Carutasu at OneWorld NewsNet, she also had the young woman’s home number.

  After getting the job at OneWorld, the first thing Lizuca had done was put in a phone. Her mother had protested the expense, the young woman had told Danielle, and the stories of how her mother had tried over the past years to manage her money had made Danielle laugh. Mrs. Carutasu’s efforts reminded Danielle a lot of her own mother’s micromanaging attempts when she’d first moved out on her own.

  The phone rang four times before it was answered.

  Danielle ducked into an alley and turned toward the wall so the street noise wouldn’t sound so loud.

  Mrs. Carutasu answered in Romanian.

  Not having knowledge of the language other than to say hello and good-bye, Danielle said in English, “Hello, Mrs. Carutasu. This is Danielle Vinchenzo.”

  “Ah, hello. Hello.” The woman’s English was limited, so even a polite conversation was difficult. “Danielle Vinchenzo. Yes.”

  “Yes. Is Lizuca home?”

  “No,” the old woman said. “Lizuca not home. She should be sleeping. Is time for bed. She work very hard.”

  “I know,” Danielle said. “I apologize. If it wasn’t important I wouldn’t have called.”

  “Oh, no,” the woman disagreed. “You call. You call.”

  “I know I called.” Danielle glanced out at the street. “I need to speak with Lizuca.”

  “Lizuca no here. She say she working. Say, tell Danielle … working. She know you call, yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “She say, tell working on peek-ture. Call you when she done. Then sleep, yes?”

  The news heartened Danielle. Over the past few days she and Lizuca had managed to develop a rapport and get a few things past

  Stolojan, including Lizuca’s overtime, which came out of Danielle’s budget. It didn’t surprise her now that Lizuca would undertake to work on the picture on her own time.

  Of course, Danielle didn’t intend for the young woman not to get paid for her trouble. She knew from conversations with Lizuca that she was sole support for a number of people in addition to her mother.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Carutasu,” Danielle said.

  “Okay. Good-bye.” The phone hung up with an abrupt click.

  Danielle put the sat-phone away in her vest. She took a deep breath and tried not to choke on the trace elements of chemicals in the dry air. She felt better. If Lizuca caught a break, Danielle knew she’d be in the middle of whatever game the CIA team was playing in Sanliurfa.

  All Saints Hospital

  Marbury, Alabama

  Local Time 0743 Hours

  “Well, there you are.”

  Blearily, Delroy opened his eyes in the dimness of the hospital waiting room. Although a line of people had been at the hospital, most of them dealing with anxiety attacks or chronic medical problems such as asthma and weak hearts aggravated by the confusion and panic of the last few days, he’d finally been examined, judged healthy—although perhaps not mentally sound—and sent on his way. The hospital beds were full of accident victims and people needing sedation till they came to grips with everything that had happened.

  Unfortunately, he had nowhere to go and all Delroy had to wear was the
backless pink hospital gown, covered by a lime green bathrobe intended for a much smaller man. They had no slippers his size. Sitting in the waiting room, trying to figure out his next move, he’d drawn a lot of suspicious stares. The fact that his personal items—his wallet, his rings, and his watch—were in a clear plastic bag in his lap didn’t help matters.

  Turning his head at the sound of the booming voice and the blunt declaration, Delroy spotted the deputy who had brought him to the hospital standing a short distance away. He wasn’t wearing his rain coat now, though he still wore boots that had been mostly wiped clean of mud. The sheriff’s badge on his chest stood out and attracted the attention of the people in the waiting room.

  The deputy came closer, eyeing Delroy skeptically. “They tell me you’re gonna live.”

  “I am,” Delroy admitted.

  “Must be a lotta tough packed in all that tall.”

  Personally, Delroy didn’t feel all that tough. He felt cold and weak. A headache slammed ceaselessly at his temples, and his eyes and nose burned.

  After the triage nurses had started Delroy on the paperwork, the deputy had left. That had made Delroy feel somewhat relieved. He wasn’t sure if he could be arrested for trying to dig up Terrence’s grave, but if the deputy wasn’t around to arrest him that was a good thing.

  Only now the man was back, not ten minutes after the doctor had pronounced Delroy fit enough and sent him to the waiting room. All it would have taken was a brief phone call to let the deputy know Delroy had been released and outfitted in a bathrobe. His wet clothing sat in a plastic bag next to his chair.

  Delroy hesitated. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

  The deputy rubbed his chin thoughtfully as if giving the question real consideration. “A man sleeping in a graveyard in a rainstorm. When he ain’t drunk—I know that ’cause I asked the doc about your tox screen, by the way—I figure that man must be in some kind of trouble.”

  “I wasn’t drinking,” Delroy said.

  “My first assumption was that you’d gotten out there and tied one on,” the deputy admitted. “These here times, why they’ve been purely tryin’ on everybody. Seen a lotta good folks these past few days trying to find some way to just get through it all. Drinking seems to be high on the list of some of ’em.” He rubbed his hands together and shrugged. “Imagine my surprise when you hadn’t been on a bender.” He paused.

  “But you have been in a fight.” He sucked on his lower lip, and sharp accusation gleamed in his eyes. “Yes, sir, you have been in a fight.”

  Caution filled Delroy. The deputy’s demeanor was deceiving; all down-home, good old boy one minute, and steel-trap mind the next.

  “The reason I know you’ve been in a fight,” the officer continued, “is your face and your hands. Your face, all bruised up like it is, lets me know somebody whomped you pretty good.”

  Delroy let that pass without comment. The deputy had delivered the statement baldly in an effort to elicit response.

  “But your hands—” The deputy crossed over to Delroy and picked up his hands in both of his. Although the deputy was shorter, his hands were as long and a little broader and thicker than Delroy’s. The man could have filled gallon paint buckets with those hands. “Yes, sir, your hands tell me you give out about as good as you got.”

  Looking down at his hands, Delroy saw the split skin and abrasions over his knuckles, and the deep bruising and swelling that accompanied those injuries. As a chaplain and counselor, he’d been trained to look for signs just like those when he suspected men aboard ship had been fighting.

  “I was attacked,” Delroy said.

  The deputy released his hands. “In the graveyard?”

  “Aye. Something—” Delroy caught his mistake immediately—“someone attacked me.”

  “You know this someone?”

  “No,” Delroy answered, and the lie wasn’t completely a lie. He thought he knew what the creature was, but he had no name for it.

  “One or more attackers?”

  “One.”

  The deputy squinted and made an obvious show of sizing Delroy up. “You’re a big man. I’d want to think twice about jumping you even in the dark if I was alone. Take a pretty big fella to fight you chest to chest and belt buckle to belt buckle.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “I saw your hands when I checked you into the hospital,” the deputy said. “Had a couple things to do here in town, so I went back out to the cemetery. Saw a tore-up piece of ground where it looked like two bulls had been fighting; it hadn’t quite washed away in the rain. That was near your son’s grave.”

  Delroy nodded. “That was where it happened.”

  “I really went out there expecting to find a body. Surprised me when there wasn’t one.”

  “Whoever did it walked away.” Or vanished, Delroy silently amended.

  “You don’t know who did it?”

  “No.”

  “You see that person again, you think you’d recognize him?”

  “No.” And that was the truth. Every time Delroy saw the creature it looked a little different. He also knew it could look human if it wanted to. In fact, he suddenly realized that the creature could look like a deputy sheriff if it wanted to.

  “Too bad. I hate unanswered questions. They tend to stick in my mind and I worry at ‘em like a dog with a bone. One thing I found out, though: most questions usually solve themselves sooner or later.

  You just gotta keep your eyes open to see it happen.”

  Delroy pulled his bathrobe a little tighter and wished that the hospital had provided him shoes. His own were as soaked as his clothes. Despite being dry now, he still felt cold.

  The deputy grinned and indicated the bathrobe. “How you like the hospitality?”

  “I don’t have any clothes,” Delroy said, “except for the wet ones.” He kicked the bag containing the sodden mess at the side of his chair. “I’ve been thinking about putting these back on, but I was hoping to find a laundry nearby. I guess I left my duffel.”

  “I’ve got your duffel out in my cruiser,” the deputy said. “I saw it and took it with me. Figured you wasn’t going but to one place after the doc cleared you: the Crossbar Hotel. I give you your clothes earlier, why you mighta gotten all dressed up and cut outta here before I had a chance to figure out what was what.”

  Delroy didn’t know how he felt about that. In all his life, he’d never been arrested. “Am I going to be arrested?”

  The question upped the interest of many of the nearby onlookers.

  A few of them started whispering to each other, their attention diverted from the televisions in two corners of the room.

  “Nah,” the deputy replied, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna arrest you. Just wanted to make sure you were all right, return your duffel to you, see if you’d come clean about the fight, and see what your plans were.”

  “Plans?” Delroy frowned. He hadn’t made any plans past reaching the cemetery.

  “Yeah,” the deputy said. “What you plan on doing after you suit up in some of those clothes I’m gonna bring you?”

  “I—” Delroy hesitated and decided to go with the truth. “I don’t have any plans.”

  The deputy looked squarely at Delroy and nodded. “Kind of figured that. Lying in the graveyard like you was, you didn’t look like a man that had planned his every move. You got anybody here in town you know?”

  Delroy immediately thought of Glenda. But he didn’t know if his wife—or ex-wife, as the case might be—was still in Marbury. She might have been taken in the Rapture.

  No, not might have been, Delroy told himself. She’s gone. She’s up there. She’s up there right now with Terrence. He hoped that he was right, and was instantly ashamed that he didn’t simply believe that.

  “No,” Delroy said. “Nobody.”

  The deputy thought for a moment, took his glasses off, cleaned them, and put them back on. “The floor nurse said she recognized your
name.”

  Delroy didn’t say anything. Knowing that people might know who he was didn’t sit well. The ones who knew him also knew that he’d quit coming back home after Terrence was killed and had more or less abandoned his family. He felt shamed about that.

  “She told me your daddy used to be a preacher around here,” the deputy said. “You bein’ a chaplain and all, well I guess you followed in his footsteps.”

  “On my best day,” Delroy stated, “I was never the man or the preacher that my father was.” He knew that was true.

  The deputy nodded and looked like he didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve got money, Deputy,” Delroy said. “Once you get me my clothes, I’ll get out of here and find a hotel.” After that, he had no clue about what to do.

  “Thought you might do something else before you did that,” the officer said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Buy me breakfast,” the deputy said. “After all, I saved your life out there. Should be worth at least a stake in a breakfast. I figure you gotta be hungry and you probably don’t know the best place to eat at in Marbury if you ain’t been here for a while. It’s Hazel’s, of course. Probably was around even back in your day.”

  “Yes, it was,” Delroy admitted, surprised at how comforting that information was. His father had taken him there as a boy, and he’d gone there on Saturday mornings with Glenda when he was on leave before they did their weekly shopping down at the farmer’s market and Werther’s IGA.

  “Well, then,” the deputy said, “I gotta admit if you knew about Hazel’s then, you’d have probably found it on your own. But if you weren’t buying me breakfast, why then you’d have been without company, wouldn’t you?”

  Delroy didn’t feel like company, but he didn’t feel right about rejecting the deputy’s offer.

  “Don’t go and be thinking about it so much,” the officer said with an honest smile. “I’m a cheap date. You can afford me.”

  Despite the sadness and melancholy that weighed within him, Delroy couldn’t help but feel a little amused at the big man. “What’s your name, Deputy? I didn’t get the chance to go through your wallet.” “Oh, it wouldn’ta done you any good,” the deputy replied. “My wife goes through it regular enough for the both of you.” He stuck out a big, freckled hand. “Name’s Purcell. Walter Purcell.”