by Ginger Booth
Clarke climbed onto a chair near the central rotunda, and waved. Deluca pointed him out. “And Sergeant Calderon?” Calderon stepped up a chair beside Clarke, and they clasped upraised hands.
Ava’s platoon cheered with enthusiasm. Outside the platoon, few knew who these people were, but the other recruits cheered them as well.
Deluca waited for the noise to run its course a little, then hastened it along. “Effective immediately, Sergeant First Class Clarke will replace Staff Sergeant Lupescu. Staff Sergeant Calderon replaces Sergeant Burton. Major Thurston, First Sergeant Walker and I have every confidence in Clarke and Calderon. They led this platoon in fitness camp.”
“Thank you, Captain Deluca,” Thurston acknowledged, taking the mike back. So much for the easy part. “With that, I hope we’ve restored enough trust, that lunch will be served, and eaten.” He hoped for polite applause on that one. He didn’t get it. “Although, given our nation’s brief history, maybe we should add fasting to the training camp curriculum. Good practice. You’ve got great teachers in your fellow recruits.” The crowd gave up a few chuckles. “What do you think, should we fast for the rest of the day?”
Ava and Marquis shrugged. Puño strode forward on the platform and held two hands up at his shoulders, facing the ceiling. Dunno. Ava strode up beside him and showed thumb’s-up. Marquis modeled thumbs-down.
Thurston hadn’t expected that, but watched the reactions from the crowd. “Undecided,” he judged. He realized he shouldn’t have asked, but he hadn’t expected the recruits to step up and put his rhetorical question to a vote. “I’m not surprised. When something like this blows up, usually more issues come out. Can you tell me some of other issues? Recruit Panic, and?”
Panic took the mike, and introduced, “My squad mates, Puño and Marquis. Sir, I’d like the GED program to continue in our free time.”
Deafening applause.
Ava gave way to Puño. “And the DTMs – democratic town meetings, sir. Those should continue in Basic. Sergeant Lupescu told me they would not. The student meshnet as well.”
Also a highly popular demand.
Marquis took his turn. “I hope we keep the resource aides from Long Island, sir.”
Strong applause there too.
Puño claimed the mike again. “Did we miss anything? Use the public mike if you have to.”
Marquis strode to platform’s edge again, and cupped his mouth as a hand megaphone. “Use the public mike!” he yelled. Enough members of the audience knew the drill, and repeated the instruction to the back of the crowd.
A cacophony came back up the wings. Puño interpreted. “I hear winter coats. Yeah, Major? Could we not do that again, outside without proper winter gear?”
Foot-stomping applause on that one.
Thurston nodded and made another note. After the DTM request, he started writing them down.
“OK, there was another,” Puño said. “Repeat it?” Without the assorted winter concerns, another thread emerged. “We pick our own room-mates, sir, is what I’m hearing.” Applause confirmed this. Another wave of concerns came up the public mikes. “The ruck march,” Puño paraphrased. “Sir, a lot of us are worried about the ruck march requirement. Alright gang, anything else we have to solve today?” There were a flurry of calls, but many of them didn’t get enough buy-in to get the relay-mike treatment up to the front.
“Looks like those are the main things, sir,” Puño concluded, and stepped back, relinquishing the mike with a slight bow.
Thurston stepped back up to the plate reluctantly, looking over his list. “Thank you, recruit Puño, Marquis, Panic, all of you. These are all excellent points. I cannot say yes to any of them right now. But I can promise that we will – excuse me, I will – address them all, in the coming weeks. I am concerned, though, that we must continue Basic Combat Training in the meantime. That’s what you’re here for. And I cannot have you do physical training, in subfreezing weather, with no food. I promise to address your grievances. Are you ready to end your hunger strike, and start Basic?”
Thunderous applause.
“Good. Recruits… As a teacher, in an Army training camp, I need to tell you something. You’re not gonna like it. In the Army, a mutiny does not end in smiles. It ends in executions.” He paused to let that sink in. “You have not yet taken the oath. You are not sworn in. The Uniform Code of Military Justice has not been presented to you, yet. That is the only thing saving you from court martial for this. It is not unheard-of for an entire training regiment to be struck, dismissed, cashiered, fired. Do not think, for one minute, that you have won, and you can do this again. You cannot. Am I understood?”
“YES, SIR.”
“I will listen to your grievances. I will ensure they are addressed fairly. But you will obey orders. Understood?”
“YES, SIR.”
Major Thurston looked over the oath the recruits were supposed to take this morning, under Colonel Newsome in Central Area. The silence dragged out a bit long.
“Is that the oath, sir?” Ava asked, off mike.
Thurston nodded, then decided to answer on the record. “Yes, recruit Panic. I intended to execute the oath now. I’m reconsidering.”
“Do we need it to eat lunch?”
Thurston smiled. “No, we don’t need it before lunch. But without the oath, I will not authorize weapons training. For instance. More importantly, once you take this oath, you can be called up for active duty. This is new, for the Hudson Army. The U.S. Army was forbidden to operate on U.S. soil. We didn’t send trainees overseas. That is not the case in Hudson. Most Hudson Army operations are on Hudson soil. In a national emergency, the air raid sirens will sound. When you hear those sirens, you should immediately drop what you’re doing and –”
Actually, the plan was for them to form up on The Plain facing Washington Statue. It occurred to Major Thurston, on that frigid day in January, that this plan was dumb.
“And report here to your assigned tables, to await further instructions,” he concluded. They’d be out of the weather, pre-sorted into their squads, easy to find and count. “Staff, please take note. This is a change in operational plan. I expect surprise drill to be carried out, to reinforce this message, at least twice in the next two weeks. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” came the much smaller, but exemplary response.
“Let’s administer the oath after we’ve presented the UCMJ,” Thurston decided. “Captain Deluca just asked me, quite rightly, whether I anticipate the training camp will be deployed. The answer is yes, captain. I do. There is no longer a separate Hudson National Guard. Quelling riots, sandbagging for floods, helping to pull survivors out of a collapsed building – I am proud to say that there are many things this brigade could do. I will volunteer us as part of our training.”
Major Thurston dismissed them to begin Basic Combat Training in earnest.
30
Interesting fact: Recruits Ava Pawic, Matthew Ryan, Afghan Kush, and Puño Libre testified at the joint investigative hearing on Major Thurston and Lt. Col. Newsome in the wake of the boot camp mutiny. The review panel judged in favor of Thurston as acting commandant.
Three weeks later, the day’s fun in the sun was rock climbing. Puño wasn’t kidding about all the playgrounds West Point had to offer. Firing ranges, campground, lake, gyms galore, and this handy climbing cliff were right on campus. It was still winter, with the low-angled sun and bare trees of early February. But it was a glorious 55-degree fake spring morning at West Point, and spirits ran sky-high.
The days were packed in Basic Combat Training. Ava was having a blast. Classroom learning, physical training, and mastering physical skills filled the days. Their scant allowance of free time was swallowed by GED prep class and democratic town meetings. Two weeks in, she met the weight requirement with no trouble, now a solid and slightly curvy 102 pounds.
Frosty was right. That bra he left for her in his apartment, actually fit her when she finished gaining the weight. Not that
she wore it. She needed a sports bra every day. Ava weighed more now than ever before in her life, but most of it was lean muscle. Fortunately, most of the time she was just too busy to think about Frosty, especially in relation to her bra size. Though vibrant energy and libido ran hand in hand.
“Your butt is distracting me, Panic,” Doc claimed, climbing the cliff face below her.
“That’s sexual harassment,” Ava returned. Then she considered her own intimate relationship with the rock face, inches in front of her. She arched her neck and tried, and failed, to look down at him, and up at Sauce climbing above her. OK, granted, she could sort of see between his legs. This bit of cliff was barely tall enough for the three of them to climb in a line. Sauce would reach the top in a minute.
“Panic! Doc! Watch the wall, not each other!” Calderon barked up at them.
Ava smirked and got back to the task at hand. They were free-climbing, secured to a rope, but picking their way up by finger and toe-holds. The sun felt glorious on her back and bare arms. Without birds, or leaves to rustle on the trees, the only sounds were recruits goofing around and laughing. Half the squad was up above, half down below, next to some train tracks running beside the broad shining Hudson River.
Sheer joy thrilled through her at being strong enough to pull up each new step. Next hand-hold selected and –
The air raid siren shrilled. Ava froze.
“Emergency muster! This is not a drill!” Calderon yelled. “Doc, rappel down! Everyone pack up to leave! Up above, all gear onto the truck! Panic, your turn, rappel down!” He continued barking out instructions.
Ava landed on the ground, untied from the rope, and spotted for Sauce coming down next. A rain of clothes fell from above, her own uniform shirt among them. Ava’s squad wasn’t the only one climbing at the Poison Ivy Wall. Over a hundred T-shirted recruits flew in every direction, above and below the cliff face, often bouncing off each other, trying to collect the climbing gear and locate their own shirts. Once Sauce was down, they collected up their climbing gear and attached it to the rope. Soldiers above pulled up rope and gear to stow in the truck.
Everyone was accounted for, and up top, Marquis confirmed the squad’s gear was stowed. Calderon ordered everyone to run for Washington Hall, about half a mile away. Ava ran with her half of the squad on gravel alongside the train tracks, cliffs shortening to their left, river gleaming to the right.
When the sirens first blew, the recruits were rattled and scattered. Now they were getting psyched. Could they really be deployed on an emergency? They were only three weeks into Basic. But they were duly sworn in, medically cleared. They’d passed their classroom training. They knew their orienteering and how to set up camp. They knew their guns, though the next two weeks were to focus on marksmanship and unit action. By now, they even had winter coats, superfluous as they were on this freakishly warm day.
When they reached South Dock, they were able to veer onto a road angling up the hill toward the academic center of campus. Ava could hear the thrum and whine of trucks and buses on the wider road above. As they crossed the main drag by Pershing Barracks, transports were parked in either direction, as far as the eye could see.
The dining wing was already packed, though Ava’s half-squad wasn’t the last to arrive. Calderon left them to confer with Sergeant Clarke and Captain Deluca’s staff. The buzz in the dining hall was nearly a roar. But the somber mood of the room clashed with Ava’s running high and eager anticipation.
In line at the water fountains, she finally heard the news. A tsunami hit the coast. Not just a little stretch of coast, but the entire Eastern seaboard. Waves 25 feet high rolled across the barrier islands of Jersey and Long Island. The city was probably underwater, a guy said hysterically. Puerto Rico and Florida washed away –
“Stop that!” Ava barked at him. “Don’t spread wild rumors!” She didn’t know it wasn’t true. She sounded like their instructors, but Ava was quelling excitable exaggeration long before she met a drill sergeant. “Can someone tell me – calmly – what you know for a fact?”
“It’s true, most of it. Major Carella made an announcement,” a recruit behind Ava offered. Her shirt named her Becca. “Tsunami waves are hitting the whole coast, over twenty feet high on Long Island.” Becca raised her voice toward the hysteric. “He didn’t say anything about the city.” She turned back to Ava. “But it would hit the city, wouldn’t it?”
Ava nodded. “Brooklyn and Queens are on Long Island. Manhattan and Staten are exposed, too.” Following Becca’s lead, she raised her voice to carry to the immediate vicinity. “Project Rebuild planned for sea level rise. Twenty feet wouldn’t drown the city. That’s not much higher than a storm surge.” A really bad storm surge, she allowed mentally. “People should be safe inside the villes.” The squatters outside the villes might be a different story.
The rest of her squad reappeared by the time she got back to the table, and she filled them in on what little she learned. Communications were dead to Long Island and Jersey. When they tried to contact friends back in the Apple Zone, the meshnet gave them a red-rimmed scolding. Hudson was in a state of national emergency. Communications reserved for coordinating emergency response only.
Ava wondered what barely trained recruits could do in such a scenario. It was a little late for sandbags. She imagined being sent with their rifles to hold a line, to prevent panicking civilians from fleeing the coast, the same way the city was cordoned off to prevent them from spreading Ebola. Judging by the grim faces at home table, she suspected she wasn’t the only one with that worry. They didn’t talk much.
About ten minutes later, Major Thurston took the microphone. “Attention! My battalion will deploy to the Apple Core. First company, Captain Deluca, Brooklyn. Second company, Captain Osenberg, Manhattan. Third company, Captain Yamata, Staten Island. All units under Major Capella and Major Smith to deploy to Queens for staging. Most will proceed from there further out on Long Island. This is an all-hands call. No one will remain at West Point. Platoon and squad leaders – as soon as your unit is ready, claim the first transport at the head of the line, and go-go-go.”
“Huddle on me!” Calderon called, and the squad gathered around. “I want us on the first bus out of here, you hear me? Puño, Marquis, collect MREs for the whole company. Get them to the head of the bus line for us to grab. That’s a minimum eight hundred MREs. Cookie, Benetton, Horn, Wicked, you’re their donkeys. Go.”
MRE stood for Meals Ready to Eat, packaged relics of a bygone era. Each flat box provided about 1300 calories, much of it in candy and sugary sports drink powder. Even the apple recruits eyed the things skeptically. But it made sense to bring their own rations into a natural disaster area.
“The rest of you grab your rucks. Pack phones, toothbrushes, spare socks, gloves, hats. Any solar chargers and crank chargers for the phones, bring those too. Wear your coats. Panic, make sure packs for the MRE crew come down with you. On the double, report back here. Questions? No? Move!”
Within 30 minutes, Ava’s platoon was loaded into a converted school bus and headed for Brooklyn. Barely an hour had passed since she clung to a cliff face above the Hudson, under the strangely balmy February sun.
“Behind me, Cookie,” Ava ordered, as they entered the dark apartment building. Their squad was helping the Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn militia to evacuate the ville.
Thin strands of sand and seaweed and wreckage glistened on the street behind them. The tsunami waves had washed in here. They were only ten blocks from the Brighton Beach boardwalk, along the same ocean front as Coney Island. A stiff salt breeze blew away any illusion of spring. The recruits from West Point freed up steadier local forces to venture south of the Shore Parkway, hunting for survivors.
Unfortunately for Hudson, the tsunami hit at high tide. The waves barreled across the barrier island, firmly glued to the Brooklyn mainland by centuries of urban development. Ava had never thought of the Brooklyn beaches as a barrier island before. The streets here wer
en’t canyons like Manhattan’s, but they bore no resemblance to the wild and sandy dunes of the barrier islands of Long Island and the Cape. Even the breeze carried more scent of industry and garbage, than fresh salt and fish.
Her assigned block had higher buildings than most in this district, seven-story edifices of chunky brick. A block over, half the lots had free-standing wooden houses, with bits of scraggly ground between. A bit run-down, and nestled between elevated train tracks and highways, Ava judged it a lower middle class neighborhood Before. Now it was outcast, never restored to the water and sewer lines, awaiting demolition to free the dunes again someday. It lay too low in the path of storm surges from rising seas.
“I should go first,” Cookie argued. “I’m bigger.”
Ava eyed the hallway uneasily, her flashlight picking up rat droppings and other reeking ordure on the wet and muddy floor. The waves had seeped in, but failed to wash anything.
“Native guide,” she said tersely. “Anyone here?” she yelled to the dark hallway. She didn’t expect anyone. Second floor and above were safer. There were no bars on the ground-floor apartment windows. With a vast city of abandoned housing to choose from, she wouldn’t have chosen an apartment on this level. They pounded on the doors anyway.
“The smell…” Cookie complained softly, fighting not to gag.
“Smells like people,” Ava said. Without sanitation, people reeked.
On the second floor, they started to repeat the drill, but Ava heard a voice upstairs. She pulled her rifle around to the front, and held it at two-handed ready as she climbed to the third floor. Above the first floor, windows shed enough daylight into the stairwell to forgo her flashlight. Cookie looked alarmed, but followed her lead.
“Hello up here?” Ava called.
