by David Poyer
Oh, he was still there, on the mountainside. Still shaking with the cold.
He just didn’t seem to be himself.
The mountains glowed with an inner light. They were folded out of rock, like origami. The way the world itself was … folded … out of … light and … time.
He looked down, and saw … himself. A tiny seed of flesh, a dying ember in the dark, nestled beside two other embers. A few sparks of electrical activity still danced in its brain. But that wasn’t him.
And he wasn’t it.
He fell through, to a place colder and harder than the mountains. Where a monstrous evil laughed, and he screamed as he was torn apart. Pain. Incredible pain.
Through endless centuries he suffered.
Then he hovered above the mountains again, bodiless, without thought.
An enormous voice spoke into his mind.
I MADE ALL OF THIS.
I have to be dying, Theodore Oberg thought. This must be what happens at the end.
THERE IS NO END. AND NO BEGINNING.
What are you telling me? he asked, or thought. Is there something you’re telling me? Something you want me to know? To do?
But without speech, without words, whatever spoke made itself understood.
YOU HAVE ALWAYS DONE MY WILL.
His entire life unlocked in an instant, and he saw how that single bidding underlay it, more rigid than iron. It was all of a piece. The mountains. The world. Everything that happened, had happened, or ever would. It had all been created, foreordained, before Time itself had existed.
Which meant:
There was no choice.
There was no will, other than Its will.
All was one thought. One act. One creation.
The creation by … whatever was speaking to him.
But now it was leaving him. Lifting, like a slowly rising, incredibly immense saucer departing for a distant star. He reached out, groping, flailing, conscious of a withdrawal like the receding tide. Trying to call it back. To go with it, if he could. Even if that meant leaving himself behind.
But it was not to be. Released, he hurtled down, like a high-altitude, low-opening night jump. Yeah. He’d been here before. But on oxygen, with a heated mask to keep his face from freezing. The black mountains below like open mouths. He cried out. Not wanting to go back into the dying, starving, agonized body. The time-bound, ignorant mind, pinched as in a narrow coffin.
Then he was gasping, convulsing on the icy gravel, and Fierros was kneeling on him, forcing a piece of wood between his teeth. The haft of his walking stick. Trinh leaned in too, looking scared in the starlight. “Get a grip, man,” the flier was muttering. “You were stroking out. Going into a seizure. Jesus! You hear me? Talk, fuckhole. Talk to me.”
But Teddy Oberg could not speak the whole rest of that night, nor for long into the next day. He stared about as they walked, like a man possessed, or a child just born.
* * *
AT last, weakened to shambling corpses, they decided to head south. It was that or die.
The valley wound between rocky outcrops, dotted with patches of pasture. When they heard the distant tinkle of bells, the bark of shepherds’ dogs, they climbed again, up ridges, covering themselves with the hide capes. Once, descending, they stumbled across a cleverly hidden sliver of field, nestled just where the sun could slide in between the peaks. Innocent green plants nodded in raked brown soil. Each spindly stalk was tipped with a tiny ball of bud. Teddy steered them away, though he still felt, in the aftereffects of his dream, that it wasn’t really his own action, but something foreordained. “The winter crop,” he explained laconically when Fierros protested at the detour. “Poppy. Like in Helmand.”
“Which means … the government isn’t in control anymore?”
Obie shrugged. “Or that the army’s concentrating on the war, not interdiction. Whoever’s doing the growing, we don’t want to meet them.”
As they tottered on, he scanned the ridgelines for sentries. Opium cultivation might be a sign they’d left China behind. On the other hand, the airman could be right. It had been that way in Afghanistan.
Poppies grew where government withered.
15
Kwajalein, Marshall Islands
HECTOR flipped through the in-flight magazines from the seat pockets. But his flight attendants weren’t the smiling Asian women in China Airlines red-on-blue uniforms pictured on the covers. Instead, Red Cross volunteers pushed carts of coffee and cookies up and down the aisles, forced smiles alternating with grimaces as pockets of rough air tremored the plane.
The officers sat up front behind the curtain, in the big curved business-class seats, each with its own reading light and worktable. The staff NCOs were grouped farther back, and the junior enlisted aft of that. Hector was over the big shining wing. He could look out, but aside from a triangle of far-off sea all he’d seen for hours was acres of polished aluminum.
Which left too long to think. About where they were going, which they didn’t know, and what would happen when they got there … which they didn’t know either. There’d been chatter at first, and a couple guys had tried to figure out how to work the in-flight entertainment in the backs of the seats. But except for a video on what to do in case of a water landing, the screens stayed empty.
After completing SOI, Hector and Troy had been assigned to Third Marines. Their orders said Hawaii, but they’d stayed on the ground there only long enough to refuel. No one was allowed off. And they had to put their blinds down, so they couldn’t even look out.
Obviously their home unit, Second Battalion, was farther west.
Finally he got up, peed, and strolled the aisle, up to the first-class section, then back to the tail. Passing incurious glances, scared faces, slack sleeping ones. Hands cupping pocket computer games. Slowly moving jaws, hypnotically masticating gum or smokeless tobacco. The women flipped through the in-flight mags, looking bored. He stopped to talk to Pruss. They were dipping too, spitting brown juice into a paper cup. “Seen Orietta?” Hector asked.
“Coreguaje? She’s up there by the partition.”
“What, you ain’t sitting together?”
Pruss muttered, “Fuck off, Ramos. We had a argument. That’s all.”
“What’s the scuttlebutt? Hear anything about where we’re going?”
“Australia, I heard. You?”
Hector said, “Japan. Guard the Imperial Palace. But I don’t believe it.”
“Where’s your friend? Troy?”
“Eighty-seven B. Want to swap seats?”
“Maybe … No. Forget it.” They draped an olive-drab issue towel over their eyes and reclined the seat until the guy behind them cursed and kicked the back. At which Pruss lowered it even more. “I’m gonna get some winks. See you in wherever.”
Hector talked to Orietta for a while, but she seemed fidgety. She was reading a Danielle Steel paperback. Hector thought about asking her to go to the little in-flight bathroom with him, but it didn’t seem like the right time. No, he’d better not. She didn’t seem in the mood, either. Everybody seemed subdued.
* * *
“THERE’S a plane out there,” one of the guys said now, peering out through the plastic. A note of worry in his voice.
The others crowded to their windows. “F-18?”
“Hope it’s one of ours.”
They squinted into the glare as the speck neared. It slowed, then dropped into position a mile off. Pacing them in. Something whirred in the wing, thumped and hissed. They surged forward in their seats.
“Ladies and gentlemen, U.S. Marines, we’re beginning our descent. The aircraft to right and left are our fighter escort. We’ll be on the ground at Bucholz Airfield in twenty minutes.”
The world vanished, obliterated in gray cotton. They were dropping through that cloud layer toward the sea. A single glimpse of a far-off island, before it too was wiped out in the whiteness.
“From the plane commander: Draw shades on both sides
of the plane. All shades must be drawn at this time.” They pulled down the shields obediently and settled back, checking their seat belts, bringing seats and tray tables to the full upright position for landing.
* * *
THE Word came back mouth to mouth: they weren’t getting off. This was just another refueling stop. They all groaned. But then the NCOs got up and started deplaning. The front rows got to their feet, then had to sit down again. A couple of guys slid their blinds up to peer out, and got yelled at to secure them again. Hector sank back and massaged his dead-numb rear end.
“From the plane commander: Center section, prepare to deplane. Leave all personal gear in your seats. No cameras, phones, or electronic equipment. No photographs on the ground. Stay in the terminal area. Smoking in front of the terminal area only. Soft drinks, water, and refreshments are available in the terminal area. Reboarding will commence with the center section, as soon as refueling is complete.”
* * *
THEY deplaned into heat, pale coral dust, and exhaust. The sky was a blue mallet. The sea, only a few hundred yards distant, was hammered out flat. The sun glared off white coral sand and boiled the air off black tarmac. “Christ, it’s a fucking furnace.” Whipkey mopped his face. “I’m gonna get back on the plane.” But when he tried, one of the sergeants told him to get the fuck back in line. So they turned around again and trudged through the searing air, over the scorching concrete, toward the concrete building that shimmered ahead.
Hector became aware of other activity around the field. Of dollies of ordnance. Of white long missile containers. Pallets of rations. Actually, mountains of rations. The sun gleamed off an eerily regular pyramid of silvery slabs. They looked beautiful. Futuristic. It took a few seconds before he realized what they were.
The silver-toned coffins, stacked beside the airstrip, baked quietly in the tropic sun.
The marines shuffled past an open shed to the wail of distant sirens. Hector tensed; some kind of attack warning? But none of the workers seemed to be headed for shelter.
Several grim-faced men in coveralls were sitting at a picnic bench, around a radio, listening to a sweet female voice. “Shanghai Sue,” somebody said, near Hector.
“Who the fuck’s—”
Whipkey grabbed his arm. “Hold up a minute. Listen up.”
The marines halted as a dulcet alto soothed, “You must know by now this is not your war. It was started at the behest of the ruling classes, to keep the peoples of the East in subjection. You know who they are. Your own wise men—Glenn, Rush, Donald, Howard, and George—have warned you about them for years. The Bilderberg Group. The Trilateral Commission. The Jews and the CEOs. The rich white men who own America.
“Why die for them? General Zhang has offered peace. If you have the chance to meet a Chinese soldier, trust him. He will become your new best friend.
“Because, I am sad to say, the U.S. is headed for the greatest disaster in its history. We do not want to destroy Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, New York. But China will strike back if attacked. Make no mistake. We will turn your hometowns into piles of melted, radioactive bricks. We will turn your loved ones into carbonized shadows. The way America did to Asians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“It saddens me to utter these words. I know you soldiers and sailors and marines are not the aggressors. I feel I know you all. You, my faithful listeners. But if American aggression continues, the beautiful land you know will be vaporized behind you. And you yourselves, brave men and women of the Second Battalion, Third Marines, listening to me now on the island of Kwajalein, will return home only in body bags.”
The marines stirred, shot uneasy glances at one another. “How’d she know we were here?” one muttered.
“Fucking bitch.”
“Turn her off.”
“Play some goddamned music.”
“But enough politics. And enough gloomy predictions from the fun-loving girl you call Shanghai Sue. So here’s a treat, a golden oldie from indie rock band Florence and the Machine, ‘Ship to Wreck.’”
The lyrics faded behind him but he couldn’t help hearing them.
And good God, under starry skies we are lost,
And into the breach we got tossed.…
* * *
INSIDE the terminal they sighed in air-conditioned cool. There were Cokes and Mountain Dews and Tropicana juices in tubs of ice. Sun Chips and sandwiches and wraps. Hector bit into one, but his teeth stopped halfway. Chicken salad.
The hydraulic blade. The post-stunner kept the blood pumping out. Then on to the scalding area, the picker, evisceration, unloading, chilling …
He eased his teeth apart, carefully, so not even a shred of macerated flesh jellied in mayonnaise could stick. Dropped the meat and bread into the trash barrel, and tried not to show how much he wanted to hurl.
* * *
THEY’D said half an hour for refuel, but two hours later he was still on the ground. The crew was puttering around the landing gear. The sirens turned out to be ambulances, headed for a helicopter pad at the far end of the strip. Not long after, bedraggled men began straggling through the terminal. Their feet dragged. Their eyes, empty. Some were barefoot. Their clothes were stained and torn. The word spread. Shipwrecked sailors, from a sunken sub tender. Some of the marines went over to share a cigarette, candy, see if they needed money.
An hour later Hector and Troy were sitting outside the terminal, nursing yet another Mountain Dew. The sun was sinking toward a flaring horizon burning with red smoke. Troy bounced to his feet as the lieutenant walked past. “Good afternoon, sir,” he drawled, snapping off a picture-perfect salute. Hector got up a second behind and saluted as well, though nowhere near as crisply.
“Sir, my buddy here, you remember Ramos.” The lieutenant nodded. “He was wondering, Kwajalein, the Corps fought here, right? You know the story on that?”
“Yeah, we fought here.”
“Well, sir?”
The officer sighed. “It was the Fourth Marine Division. A four-day battle. The Japanese were outnumbered. We killed about five thousand of them. Only fifty were left to surrender. Our own casualties were pretty light.”
Whipkey said, in that smacky way he had around officers, “Well, hey, that’s good. We got it right, right, sir?”
“That time. But the enemy figured out they couldn’t defend on the beaches. So they decided they’d suck us inland, and really draw blood. That’s what they did in Peleliu and Guam.”
Troy’s head bobbed. “Uh-huh. Thanks for the history lesson, sir. That’s good Corps gouge, that’s for sure.”
* * *
ANOTHER hour passed. Hector told Troy he was going over to look at the water. The Pacific. A whole different ocean. The gunny had warned them not to go in, even to wade; there were sea snakes and stinging coral. And to double-time back if they heard a recall whistle. Whipkey was talking to another guy from Florida, and told him to go on ahead. So Hector walked over alone.
The light was almost gone. The sea, flat. The heat was stifling. The waves lapped at the broken coral like an overfed cat licking its food. He walked along smiling at the little crabs that scurried away, halting every few inches to lift their claws as if inviting him to box.
A half-familiar shape, just under the surface of the transparent water. He bent and tweezed it up with his nails.
A cartridge, unfired, the same diameter bullet, but longer than the 7.62s they fed the Pig. Corroded green, coated with coral accretion. He rubbed at the verdigris to expose bright brass. Who had dropped it here? Some marine, wading ashore, expecting to be cut in half by a Jap machine gunner?
He still didn’t hate the Chinese. Could he make himself kill them? Maybe. If they came over the wire, trying to kill him and his buddies. But was it true, what the protesters back at the gate at Pendleton, and what Shanghai Sue had said? That this war was being fought for corporations, like Farmer Seth?
That he himself was just another carcass on the Line?
> Sirens wailed again. He glanced back, then stiffened. The ambulances were turning in to the terminal this time.
* * *
WHEN he got back one ambulance was parked near the door closest to the head area. A trauma cart stood near the men’s room. When a corpsman came out, got something from it, and went back in, her boots left bloody prints on the tile deck. An NCO stood with arms folded, keeping everyone else out. The lieutenant emerged, glanced around, and beckoned the gunny in with a crooked finger.
“Fuck’s going on?” said Pruss, materializing at his side. They looked half in the bag, and smelled of alcohol. Hector wondered where they’d gotten it. He hadn’t seen any on sale.
“Don’t know. Somebody had an accident, in the head?”
Hector kept looking at a pack someone had left by the entrance to the head. At the name stenciled on it.
Suddenly it connected. He flinched, then went for the door to the restroom. The NCO was turned away, explaining something to an officer. He made a grab at Hector as he brushed by, but he evaded him and slid past. Preoccupied with whatever the officer was asking him, the sergeant let him go.
The stall door was open. The medics were working on the man inside, but from their faces, it wasn’t exactly a rush job. The dark blood pooled on the floor tiles said that too.
Hector crouched next to the body, the big, immobile head, searching the fixed eyes for some spark. But Bleckford didn’t blink. Or breathe. Or move. The big, soft-looking hands that had helped the rest of the Booger Squad out of the mud back at Basic, that had manhandled their burdens for the weaker members, even when the DI screamed at him to stop, lay open, palm up as if in surrender.
“What happened?” Hector asked the medic, who was stuffing gear back into her bag.
She spared him a glance. “Buddy of yours?”
“Boot camp.”
“This.” She pointed to a black tube protruding from the side of Bleckford’s head.
He peered closer. It was … plastic. The lower casing of an issue ballpoint. The tapered point disappeared into Bleckford’s dark kinky hair, and blood and matter oozed out around it.
