Ever Onward

by Wayne Mee

  Josh Williams had grinned and shot him the finger.

  “Ya? Same to you, fella!”

  It was a very old Bob Newheart joke, not funny to anyone anymore but the two old friends.

  Now, a month later and over four thousand feet higher, Robert Fuller found himself struggling up some god-forsaken goat’s trail called the Shorty Shortcut and heading for a place with the heart warming name of Panther’s Gorge. The view, he had to admit however, was incredible! For as far as the eye could see, towering peaks stretched away in all directions. Fluffy white clouds floated in the green carpeted valley below them. A hawk, drifting on the thermal updrafts, hung suspended high above them, its sharp, predator’s eyes watching for the slightest movement. The air felt clean and fresh as it must have on the first day of creation.

  Just after dawn they’d left Josh’s camper back at The Garden, a hiker’s parking lot several miles up a twisting, stream crossed road above the quaint little mountain village of Keene Valley. Backpacks loaded with all the gear and food they’d need for a week in the ‘great outdoors’, the three ‘bold adventurers’ had hiked up to their present position. Now, dirty, sweating, heart pounding and back aching, Bob leaned against a boulder the size of his insurance office back in Crown Point.

  “I’m fine, Jessie,” he gasped. “Just giving your old man a head start!”

  Josh Williams, making sure his son couldn’t see, shot Bob the finger.

  Both men smiled.

  Jessie called down from above. “You guys coming or what? I’m getting hungry!”

  “You’re always hungry!”, Josh replied. “Have a Granola Bar!”

  Jessie’s face hung over the boulder thirty feet above them. His long blond hair covered all but his smile. “I finished those off back at the lean-to.”

  Josh shrugged at Bob and started up the open rock. “Better get going before he eats my supper as well as yours.”

  Bob sighed and adjusted his shoulder straps. “Let him. At least these bloody packs will be lighter!”

  They made camp soon after on a flat outcropping just under a mile above sea level and just over nine miles from the nearest road. After a meal of noodles and Josh’s wife’s spaghetti sauce, washed down with tea and hot chocolate, they watched the sun set in all its fiery splendor, then turned in. Bob was dead to the world as soon as his head hit the non-existent pillow. Jessie gave his dad a hug and crawled into his sleeping bag, eager for the morrow’s climb. By candle light, Josh smoked his pipe, wrote in his log and thought of his wife. Soon he too sought his bed.

  As he lay in his sleeping bag watching the stars appear in the heavens, Josh wondered what Bob would say if he knew he was sleeping on what the locals called The Spine of God. All three hikers were totally unaware of the catastrophe that had taken place at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada some twenty four hours earlier. Josh turned on his side. Thoughts of tomorrow’s long climb up Mount Marcy filled his mind. Hoping the weather would hold, he drifted off to sleep, while over half a continent away, silent, swift, death raced towards him.

  Chapter 3: THE DARK STRANGER

  China Lake Naval Weapons Center

  California. June 22

  Private Jocco Wellington let the jeep role to a stop, hardly noticing the quiet crunch as the front wheel passed over yet another half empty uniform. Jocco was confused. Everyone was dead, and that bothered him. Not the fact that they were dead exactly, but the fact that he had no fucking idea how they came to be that way!

  Since waking up in the barracks and finding all the bunks filled with what looked like crumbling ashes, he had searched half the base and found nothing but bodies. Hundreds of bodies, or rather, half bodies; each with that gray papery shit spilling out of them.

  Lighting a cigarette, he squinted up at the sun. Nearly noon. He got out and walked over to General Bremen’s office. Bremen was a real hard-ass, but he’d know what the fuck was going on. But if General Bremen knew, he wasn’t telling. All Jocco found in the office was a shirt-full of more gray papery crap with four gold stars on the collar.

  Then the phone rang and Jocco nearly browned his shorts. Fumbling with the receiver, he held it away from his sweating body as though it were a deadly snake.

  “General?!”, the voice on the line yelled. “General, is that you?! Thank Christ you’re alive!”

  Jocco remained silent, his conniving brain racing. All his life he had lived by his wits. Pimping, running drugs, always playing it close to the edge, always just one step away from the Boys in Blue. But, like the fat lady said: ‘All good things must come to an end!’ Sold out by a little prick who sought to take his place, the D.A. had made Jocco an offer he couldn’t refuse: join the army or do a seven year stretch in the can. Jocco had no great desire to serve Old Glory, yet neither did he much relish the thought of having his asshole reamed out by some killer retard named Bubba.

  And now this! Life was just one big fuck-up from the word go!

  “General? Are you there?” the voice on the line squeaked. “SPEAK TO MEEEEE!”

  This last had been screamed, snapping Jocco back to the present. “I’m here”, he said. “Who’s this?”

  “Oh, Sweet Jesus!”, the voice wined. “I thought everyone was gone!”

  “Get a grip, soldier and report!” Jocco was warming to his role. He’d always thought he’d have made a great actor. Sort of a cross between a young Tom Cruise and that handsome little prick, what’s-his-name. After all, wasn’t that what life was anyway? Just one big meaningless farce?

  “Er, yes sir!”, the voice answered. “Lieutenant Pinkton here, sir! Walter J. From the Personnel Department. We’ve never really met, sir but...”

  “Pinkton!”, Jocco said coldly. “Get to the fucking point!”

  “Yes, sir! I will, sir! But they’ll be here soon, so shouldn’t we... I mean, don’t you...”

  Jocco’s mind continued to whirl. “Pinkton, WHO will be here soon?”

  “Why, the boys from Miramar, sir. I phoned Fort Irwin first, and then the Marine Corps at Twenty-Nine Palms, but neither one of them answered. Only the Naval Station at San Diego responded.” His voice had been climbing higher and higher and Jocco could tell he was on the edge of panic. “After I saw... saw...”

  “WHEN, Pinkton? WHEN will they get here?”

  “What? Oh, any time now, sir. They seemed to be having some trouble of their own, but they promised they’d come! They promised!”

  Jocco felt the germ of an idea begin to blossom in his brain. He’d felt its tantalizing tickle before, but always had to push it aside as cold reality rushed in. Now, perhaps, it was the time to allow such thoughts their freedom. Throwing caution to the wind, Jocco decided to give it a shot.

  “Meet me in fifteen minutes at the Officer’s Mess. We’ll wait for them together.”

  Pinkton sounded like a Sunday sinner granted redemption. “Oh, yes, sir; thank you, sir! Thank you!”

  Jocco replaced the phone in its cradle, a cruel, crafty smile lighting up his handsome face.

  Private Theodore Smith, called Smitty by a few and Pussbag by many, rocked back and forth in the corner of his barracks. His ferret-like eyes wild with maniacal fear, a dripping bayonet clutched in his bloody hand.

  Close by was the body of a young soldier. Not one of those papery bee-hive things, but a honest-to-God flesh and bone body! Like the precious few other people left alive that morning, the young private had somehow been passed over by the late, great Estelle Dority’s infamous creation. A survivor who had survived only long enough to be killed by yet another survivor! Aint life a bitch? The irony of the situation however, was clearly lost on Pussbag. In point of fact, Pussbag himself had been lost for most of his miserable, psychotic life.

  The child-soldier had come upon Pussbag trembling in a corner and offered him his hand. Thinking himself attacked by his many sins come to life, Pussbag Smitty had stabbed the hapless survivor till his arms tired.

  Now, sitting in a puddle of his own urine, Pussbag cocke
d his head to one side. What was that? A motor? Yes? YES! Crawling on all fours to the nearest window, he timidly poked his head up just high enough to see out.

  Pussbag couldn’t believe his eyes. A jeep! A Jesus to Christ jeep! Tooling along over the tarmac as nice as you please! There was just one guy in it and --- would ya look at that?! The fucker was smoking a cigarette and smiling!

  Pussbag watched the dark stranger with ferret-like intensity. Something in that face reminded him of... of something he both desperately wanted to remember yet longed desperately to forget. A dead dream resurrected from his hellish childhood. The one nightmare he repeatedly pushed away had now suddenly come to life!

  Unbidden, an image of his mother materialized in his maggoty brain. She was leaning over him, one hand clamped on his frail shoulder, the other pointing to an open book. Young Theodore had not wanted to look at the picture, but Mommy had insisted, and Mommy always got what she wanted.

  “Look at Him, you little shit! LOOK AT HIM!!”, her shrill voice had demanded. Even through the haze of years Pussbag could still smell the sent of cheap gin and religious ecstasy on her breath. “Look at the Dark Stranger! If you’re naughty, He will come for you!” Her ringed fingers had dug into his thin flesh, pushing him closer to the page. “The Dark Stranger ALWAYS comes for naughty little boys!”

  His heart pounding, Pussbag absently wiped his snotty nose with the sleeve and fixed his gaze back on the man in the jeep. The handsome face was the same as the one in Mommy’s Good Book. When the jeep passed beyond his view, Pussbag Smitty silently followed, the bayonet still clutched in his bloody hand.

  Jocco stopped the jeep at the back of the Officers Mess and looked around. Bodies were everywhere. Draped over crates; laying sprawled on the ground. One was half in, half out of the back door. All had been reduced to that paper-thin gray shit.

  With all the finesse of a runaway garbage truck, the ghost of a plan Jocco had kept secretly locked away for years continued to push itself forward. Humdrum, every day thoughts were casually shunted aside as easily as the parchment thin bodies that littered the runway. Part of him tried to hold it back, to wait until he was certain. Yet another part, the wilder, savage part that always lurked just beyond the surface, urged him on.

  Then someone staggered out the side door of the Officer’s Mess, leaned over the railing and puked. The bottle he’d been holding fell, exploding on the asphalt like a bomb. Looking up, their eyes met. The puker’s widened, flicked to the shattered bottle, then back to Jocco. His mouth fell open, a string of thick saliva trailing from his lower lip.

  “You a ghost, man?”

  Jocco grinned. “Not likely. What are we drinking?”

  The man, in his early thirties, was big, balding, unarmed and drunk as a skunk. Jocco casually walked over and read the soldier’s nametag: Sampson.

  “Nothing but the best, man”, Sampson slurred. “The fucking best!”

  His hand close to the .45 at his hip, Jocco motioned towards the open door of the Mess. “Set ‘em up then, friend. I’m buying.”

  Sampson seemed to find the casual remark extremely funny. Laughing as only a well practiced drunk can, he staggered back inside. Jocco followed.

  “Keep your money, man,” Sampson grinned. “Drinks are on the fucking house!”

  The room was littered with bodies. A good number were women, their skirts and dresses mingled with the uniforms like a cut close line. Officer’s wives, daughters, girlfriends. Jocco could care less. Sampson had found another bottle and was attempting to fill two glasses. His hand shook so much that most of the amber liquid ended up on the bar.

  “Fuck it!”, he growled, sweeping the glasses away with his free hand, he grabbed another bottle and thrust it towards Jocco. “Here, man. Help yourself.”

  Jocco took a sip, then placed the bottle gently on the dripping bar. Sampson was chugging his. Shock, Jocco reasoned. He’ll pass out soon. Soon turned out to be very soon. Sampson hadn’t half finished the bottle before it finished him. His eyes rolling white, he slid silently down behind the bar. What remained of the bartender was already there.

  Jocco smiled, his mind racing. Over three thousand men were stationed at the China Lake Base. It seemed that only three of them were left alive. One in a thousand. He wondered if those odds held for off the base as well. The wild part of him hoped so.

  One way to find out, he reasoned. He walked to the phone and dialed an outside line. A list of names and numbers was by the phone. He tried them all. State Police; Ridgecrest Hospital; Bakersfield Hospital; Los Angeles Airport; then, just to be sure, the Malamar Naval Air Base near San Diego. He got a number of machines, but nobody home. Some high roller had penciled in the number of The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Under that was scrawled: ‘For a sweet time call Candy’. A local number followed. Snake Eyes on the casino. Candy’s number got him a recorded ‘Moved. No forwarding address.’ Jocco grinned. Even the local whore-house had suddenly packed up and blown away.

  His pulse raced. With every passing moment years of conditioning dropped away, leaving him stripped to the emotional bone. His smile widened. Ex-pimp, ex-pusher and now, ex-private in the army of the late-great United States of fucking-America! Ain’t life grand?!

  Just then a horn sounded. Jocco saw a jeep stop out front. Lieutenant Pinkton from Personnel I presume? Jocco took the bottle from the bar and sat down facing the door. He then placed his .45 automatic on the table next to the bottle. He intended to give Pinkton a choice. Join his little team of carefree survivors or join the other silent snoozers that now seemed to litter the outside world.

  It was while pondering such weighty questions as these that the plane passed overhead.

  Chapter 4: DEATH’S SHADOW

  Miramar Naval Air Station

  San Diego, California, June 22

  The young pilot, Squadron Leader Ben Hymus, his eyes wide and nervous, caught up with Lieutenant Sam Waterson at the open hatch of the troop plane. Like the rest of them, he’d been told to report for active duty only fifteen minutes ago.

  “What’s up, L.T.? Why the big scramble? And why this old piece of shit?” He rapped the camouflaged skin of the B-17.

  As they spoke, a truck pulled up and men wearing what looked like space suits jumped out and began loading heavy equipment into the plane. Most of the boxes were marked with big red letters: Property of the U.S. Government. Department of Chemical Warfare.

  Lieutenant Waterson shrugged. “No idea, Ben. All I know is that the brass has gone absolutely bat-shit. There’s some talk about a plague outbreak, but nothing confirmed.”

  “’Plague?!’, Hymus echoed. “Where?”

  Waterson shrugged again. “Out in the Big Nothing.”

  “China Lake?”, Hymus said. “Christ, ‘Big Nothing’ is right! That’s up near Death Valley.”

  Waterson’s smile looked more like a nervous twitch. “Join the Navy and see the world, son. Isn’t that what they told you?”

  Hymus grunted, watching the space suits continue to load boxes into the B-17’s big belly. “It’s been some time since I flew one of these babies. Hope to Hell I remember how.”

  Waterson slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s like getting laid, Ben; once in the saddle, it all comes back to you. Besides, half the guys coming with us are pilots, myself included.”

  A space suit strode over to them and swung open his face mask. Both Waterson and Hymus recognized Colonel Jackson Carter and began to salute.

  “At ease, men. No time for formalities. Haul your asses in there and get suited up. We’re leaving in five minutes!”

  Colonel Carter was wrong; they were airborne in three.

  Lieutenant Waterson was having one hell of a time fighting down the panic. Outwardly calm, his stomach kept wanting to throw up. Twenty minutes into the flight he left the co-pilot’s seat, nodded to Squadron Leader Hymus, and went back into the belly of the B-17.

  The boxes were unpacked now, and the Chemical Warfare people were hard at work at
whatever the hell it was they do. Lights were flashing and scopes were whirling, but these all dimmed by comparison to the red rage on Colonel Carter’s face. He was literally punching a portable console, and getting anything but satisfying results.

  Waterson walked over to Major Chino Fetti, an old friend and one of the colonel’s aids. Fetti saw him and leaned forward, their faceplates almost touching. Waterson saw sweat beading the other man’s face. The skin-tone looked gray.

  “It looks bad, Sam. The old man’s about to bust a gut!”

  “How bad?” Waterson didn’t miss the catch in his voice.

  “No answer at any base in the south-west,” Fetti replied nervously. “None of them! What’s more, it’s been confirmed now. Chemicals were used! Somewhere in southern Cal. Looks like we’ve been caught with our fucking pants down!”

  Waterson’s mind seemed to have slipped into neutral. The words didn’t quite register. “We what?”

  Fetti’s voice grated on his ears. “Somebody’s shoved a grenade full of fresh new bio-germs up our ass and pulled the fucking pin!” His suited hand stabbed at on of the B-17’s round windows. “There dying by the millions out there! L.A.’s out! So is Frisco! The old man’s trying to raise Miramar, but getting jack shit!”

  Years of training suddenly kicked in. Waterson’s befuddled mind conjured up a picture of the White House. “What about Washington?”

  Fetti’s helmet nodded. “Airforce One is already in the air.”

  Waterson sighed with relief. Fetti, however, had more ‘jolly news’ to impart. “It gets worse, Sam. Everything west of the Continental Divide is gone! Colorado Springs was on line, but then we just lost contact. Now Omaha’s out!” He scrubbed at his helmet as though his gloved hand could reach his hair. “Whatever the fuck this is, its moving east a hell of a lot faster than we are!”