It’s said that every great journey starts with one step; if Deines wanted to become a SEAL, he’d have to take his, numero uno, mentally and physically. Suck it up Buttercup…
Gary Deines would rather die than ring the bell and quit. Hanging on by his fingernails, he lifted his foot and stepped. And after he took the first one, the rest followed, hobbling every goddamn one of them.
He pushed out the soul crushing distance to the finish line and focused on the only thing he could, the goddamn pain. The sun rose and set and the days went by…
With his bones grinding together and tears streaming down his face, Hell Week was over. As if there was any other way, he made it by the skin of his teeth. Maybe tough didn’t quite cover it – not for what Petty Officer Deines was.
***
The door opened and Captain Banks entered the berthing quarters.
Petty Officer Deines turned to face him. “Sir,” he addressed the Marine Corp. Officer.
“Gentlemen,” Captain Banks said after pausing and looking around the room.
“Think we can grab some supplies sir? Need to load our magazines and grab some first aid,” Petty Officer Deines requested.
“We may not have everything we need but we’ve got plenty of that,” Capt. Banks affirmed.
“First aid, sir?”
“Rounds Petty Officer Deines... Ammo… Armory is still tip top and intact… along with most of the base... most of it, anyway… We’ve got enough small arms and bullets to last a few years,” he quipped and pointed toward the armory.
Petty Officer Deines looked toward the armory, “I’m sure as hell glad you still have the two Vulcan Helicopters sir.” Without them, the SEAL knew they’d still be stuck in Coronado, or dead.
“Me too sailor,” Capt. Banks softly answered. “Me too…”
“Where’s the B.A.S. (Battalion Aid Station) sir?”
“He’s doing ok Petty Officer,” Capt. Banks affirmed, referring to the injured SEAL. “I’ll show you, come on.”
“Roger that… Thank you sir.”
The two men walked out of the barracks and enjoyed the sunshine that was quickly being swallowed by incoming cumulous monsters. Staring back at them, dark billows hung over the ocean.
“Looks like rain,” Capt. Banks said, squinting over the mountain range. He noticed darkness emanating over the unseen ocean and let his gaze linger after realizing the sky looked serious. “Damn sure going to come down.”
Deines also realized how ominous the sky looked, feeling the pain in his foot increase.
Capt. Banks pointed back toward the motor pool like he was going to tell Deines that’s where the BAS was, but his words hung up. The officer couldn’t pull away. He paused, eyeing the storm as if it were a precipice.
Gary Deines looked down at his foot and wiggled it. “Yeah, think you’re right... gunna rain.”
Finally, the officer broke free from Mother Nature’s looming power and turned away. “Keep the BAS inside the motor pool these days,” Capt. Banks said as he began walking across the grinder, looking back once more.
“Why’s that?” Gary Deines asked, figuring he already knew the answer.
“The big hospital near the main gate was blown to hell. Bastards…” he said, wondering if the SEAL had been in the hospital before. Most of the Recon and Frogmen stationed on the west coast had to do physicals there and between those two groups, injuries abound.
“Only place I’ve ever had another man stick his finger up my ass… but still…” Petty Officer Deines stated like he was describing an award he’d won instead of a rectal.
“Me too!” Capt. Banks shouted. Both men chuckled, feeling a bit embarrassed inside.
“Still sad that it’s gone…” Deines said appearing to gaze out in thought. Capt. Banks knew the SEAL was referring to everything being gone, the world. The hospital was one of those destroyed symbols that represented the worst of the war; it hurt just a bit more.
They entered the medical quarters that were now cleaner than when the space was strictly a motor pool office.
“How you doing champ?” Petty Officer Deines asked his SEAL teammate who was working out in the hospital bed.
He was doing dips on the side rails and turned to face the two men walking toward him. “Super.”
“Don’t you think you need to give that a rest son,” Capt. Banks suggested.
“No sir,” the injured SEAL responded.
“Color’s back… Still ugly,” Deines jabbed as he reached over to pinch his teammate’s cheek.
“Ok pretty boy,” Imo responded while pulling his head back. Pronounced ee-mo, Dan Blevins was half Japanese. His mother used to call him Imo as a child and the name stuck. Imo in Japanese means little potato.
“Wait till I get out of this bed,” he promised.
The men could never treat Petty Officer Deines like a full-blown officer but they respected his new position as acting, CO. For the most part though, they still thought of him as one of the boys.
“I’m glad you’re alright little potato,” Deines cracked.
“Let the corpsman know if you need anything sailor,” Capt. Banks suggested as Imo went back to doing another set of dips. Captain Banks was shocked the guy could even move.
“Roger that sir,” Imo said staring straight ahead with veins popping out of his tan skin.
“Guessing he’ll be fine,” Capt. Banks said, shaking his head in amazement.
Gary Deines flipped Imo the bird along with a smirk as he and the Captain began to walk toward the BAS exit.
CHAPTER 34 - BATTLE OF WILLS
“Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.”
― William Shakespeare
“How did I do?” Clio asked.
“I’m proud of you. You did good… you did real good today Clio,” Russ responded.
“Can we go look for my mother then?”
“Ah…” Russ let out a sigh as he looked at the ground and placed his hands on his hips.
“Please,” Clio asked.
“I don’t know yet…” Russ said, as he seemed to search for the right answer in the floorboards.
Clio sensed Russ was thinking about something, pondering a deep thought perhaps.
“What are you thinking about?” Clio asked.
Envisioning the railroad tracks, Russ lifted his head up and looked through the back of the house. “Just thinking about… something… I don’t know though…” he said as he searched the floorboards again.
“What? Tell me,” Clio demanded with a measure of curiosity that only a twelve-year-old girl could cross-examine with.
“The tracks,” Russ said.
“What about them?”
Trying to solve the importance of the tracks, Clio’s mind rummaged through her memories. I know it’s here somewhere, throwing unwanted thoughts aside. Next…
“Well…”
“What?” she asked. Wait a minute… her mind latched on to an idea. Clio began thinking of a set that ran near the RMB, or had she dreamt she’d seen railroad tracks by her home once?
“They run right by the base,” Russ said, snapping Clio out of her daydream.
“They do!” she said. “You’re right! I remember seeing them…” Nodding up and down, Clio placed her palm on her forehead.
“Yup... They go right by the damn place,” Russ affirmed, wishing he could undo his words along with the idea of following the tracks to the RMB.
“Let’s go right now!” Clio shouted.
“Child, are you nuts!” Russ yelled.
Clio glanced down at the floor with the air let out of her. “I just miss her… I have to find her,” she pleaded.
“I know you do honey, but...”
“What if she needs our help?” Clio asked.
Russ knew that the possibility of Clio’s mother still being alive was remote. We’d probably get killed in the process of searching for her ourselves, he thought.
“Calm down. We need to rest and prepare before we even think about taking a trip like that,” Russ ordered, like he was telling his daughter that she couldn’t take the car out for the weekend.
Clio nodded her head in agreement while holding back from screaming. She wanted to point out the fact they could get loaded up and be ready in minutes. How can he not know this? Clio wondered.
“Besides, I’m not a spring chicken anymore, need my rest.”
Clio realized that Russ was what she thought of as, old, but didn’t have it in her to understand what old did to a body. Her eyes could see it, and so did her instincts. An old man, tough as he was – was standing before her.
“Ok,” she relinquished, trying to fight back tears.
Russ looked at the top of the sulking girl’s head, watching her burn a hole through the floor with her eyes. Can’t believe I’m doing this, Russ was still thinking it as he said it, can’t believe it. “Clio… We can go in the morning… Ok… How’s that?”
“Yes!” Clio shouted, making Lady bark and jump up. Clio grabbed Lady’s paws and starting dancing with the dog, spinning around in a circle.
Russ shook his head and watched them play. Twirling, Lady looked over at Russ with an unsure expression and tried to keep pace on her hind legs. Please stop this unnatural ballet; the dog seemed to communicate.
More than his Husky wanted off the twelve-year-old girl’s ride, Russ wanted to stop the whole bloody idea of this trip. He’d raised a daughter to Clio’s age so he knew that the possibility of the trip not happening was – impossible.
Russ hated cats and unfortunately, this one was now out of the bag. He’d probably get to the point of wanting to put a bullet in his head from her nagging him. The old man thought of Bell, God could she beat a dead horse when she didn’t get her way. Especially with something she really wanted. But lord… he loved and missed her so damn much.
Clio released the dog’s paws and then followed south and gave a big hug. “I love you,” Clio whispered in her ears, burying herself into fur, seeing her mother’s face.
Watching the two girls play, Russ thought of what his Bell would look like if she were still alive. She’d been dead a few years. The old man shook out the awful images, the traces of what he’d found left of his wife and daughter were too much to thwart. Nothing was ever found of his Bell. Other than blood, not a scrap was left. The old man found his wife’s wedding ring still intact, just like her hand and finger to which it was still attached.
Satisfied from cuddling the dog, Clio popped back up and looked at Russ. “What should I start packing?”
Russ knew the girl wanted to go find her mother but he was still surprised at how focused she was. He admired the warrior spirit that oozed from her pores.
“Set your ruck on the table,” Russ ordered.
After walking into the kitchen, Russ slid off his ruck and placed it down. He rested a hand on a round cherry tabletop and dug things out the pack with the other. Needing to make a list, he stopped unloading and assigned her to finish the job.
“Go ahead and take everything out of this one and do the same to yours,” ordered the old man.
Clio took hers off and placed it next to the other much larger Mountain style rucksack and began removing its contents.
Russ opened drawers in the background of the kitchen, and then left out after he didn’t find what he was looking for.
“What are you looking for?” Clio asked.
“Pen and paper,” he responded.
Wanting to help, Clio left the kitchen and joined him in searching the living room. She opened a drawer on a rectangular piece of furniture supported by long skinny legs that spiraled up in woodcarvings. Faces peeked out and she reached in to see who they were.
Clio dusted the glass with her fingertips, wondering how so much filth made its way inside a closed drawer. She stood behind the sofa eyeing the old man. “Was this them?” she asked. “Russ, look,” Clio demanded, thinking the festive picture would cheer him up. Why’s it in here… Maybe he’s forgotten about it, she wondered.
Kneeling and ignoring, Russ glanced down at the note pad while he shut the drawer underneath the coffee table. The old man eyed a legal pad with a small calendar stamped on the top corners of each page. Been a while since I’ve seen this thing, Russ thought while not wanting to see what Clio was trying to show him.
He placed the calendar on top of the coffee table and turned toward the twelve-year-old, verifying the picture in her hand. Thumbing through the pages in his hand, Russ glanced down at the pad. “Yeah… I see it… Put it back,” he asked in a low voice before making eye contact with her again to assure she obeyed.
“I’m sorry,” Clio said after she tucked the picture away. She wanted to look through all the pictures that were inside the drawer but thought better of it in light of the old man’s expression. Obviously the picture bothers him, or something, Clio thought. It was his dead family, how could it not? Why this one though? She wondered.
It used to be the old man’s favorite picture. One of those rare things captured on film at just the right moment. The sunny shore of a Caribbean beach highlighted their smiles. He, his wife and his daughter vacationing, immortalized together in a beautiful snapshot in time. Time… Russ realized it had been somewhere around a year since he’d seen the photo last. He wasn’t sure though… The fact that the image was burned in his brain helped cloud when he actually last held the thing in his hands.
After what it did to him the last time, he promised that he’d never look at it. It took too much out of him.
Using his last bout of depression as a marker, that’s right he thought, as the answer came to him, it’s been almost a full year since I saw it, his hand tracing over the day on the calendar pad.
His wife’s third missed birthday was fast approaching. Holding that damn picture last year around this time was just enough to push him over the edge. And for some reason, nothing else brought him as low as the sight of the three of them together in that very photograph.
Although he kept it hidden, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. Pictures that his wife hated when she was alive, including that one, he regarded as priceless; whether he would ever look at them again was beside the point.
Clio looked down at the calendar with a somber expression of her own.
“What is it? Russ asked.
“My birthday… forgot it was tomorrow,” Clio said, looking at the calendar.
CHAPTER 35 - KING TO TYRANT
“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat
until he eats them.”
-Samuel Butler
The massive humanoid was squatting over the male lion and went back to eating, deliciously enjoying the torn out liver when it caught a particular scent again. Stopping, it sniffed the air as if it were a wolverine perched in the middle of a giant, pristine blanket of fresh snow. After lifting its chin up, the creature’s nostrils flared, getting a whiff of something special drifting through the air molecules. Fear…
The creature looked through the metal and glass of vehicles that littered I-95 and saw them through a tiny sliver. Using powerful legs, it rose up like a high reach, towering above the cars.
Dr. Pressfield and Cy were still squatting next to a vehicle, hoping it wouldn’t notice them.
“It sees us Dr. Marcus.”
Dr. Pressfield didn’t answer and watched the monster slowly move like the Grim Reaper toward them.
Cy scanned the surrounding vehicles to detect if one of them was operable. Nothing... The young cyborg jumped on top of the vehicle they were using for cover, landing on its roof. His scanners downloaded information on each vehicle in milliseconds.
Registering it as an act of aggression, the creature stopped, taken back by Cy’s leap to a higher vantage point. Like waving your hands out and yelling at a grizzly bear in the wild, it worked. Nothing had ever challenged the massive flesh eater before.
“There, Dr. Marcus,” Cy said pointing several vehicles ahead. “The Range Rover! It’s still operational. Run to it when I tell you and flip on its back up reserves when you get in,” Cy ordered.
Dr. Pressfield shook his head that he understood and kept his eyes fixed on the creature. Oh shit… It was looking right at them.
It began moving forward on its hind legs, inspecting Cy and smelling the fear wafting out of Dr. Pressfield’s every pore. The smell emboldened the monster and it moved in at a quicker pace. It passed the Range Rover that Marcus so desperately wanted to climb inside. The creature stopped and crouched, waiting ten cars up from where they stood.
I wonder if the door is locked, Dr. Pressfield pondered.
Cy jumped off the car and stood in front of Marcus. Continuing to keep the foul smelling thing in his sights, Cy spoke to Dr. Pressfield. “I’ll hold it off so you can make it to the Range Rover Dr. Marcus.”
“Cy… I’m…” Dr. Pressfield didn’t know what he was trying to say. He was shaking so badly he wasn’t sure he could even move. “I’m thinking of just pissing myself instead, Cy.”
“You have to run Dr. Marcus. Don’t worry, everything will be ok,” Cy confirmed.
Marcus looked at the back of Cy’s head, both keeping a lock on the humanoid.
The creature moved forward again and slowed twenty yards away from their position, and then stopped. Cars and trucks surrounded all three beings. All three different, yet still connected, sharing the ancestry of cells that traveled billions of years to arrive, alive, at this moment inside them.
Vehicles wore burn marks from Ker blasts while others were riddled with holes. Some had broken glass through which the drivers were shot.
The Range Rover was in perfect order and nothing was broken or missing. Hope the backup power works, Marcus thought.
“Ssshhhhaaa!” the creature hissed and coiled low.
“Get ready Dr. Marcus,” Cy ordered.
The monster went down on all fours and waited, hunching. Its chest was moving in and out like an industrial furnace bladder, locking eyes with Dr. Pressfield. Marcus knew the thing was smart. It wasn’t bypassing Cy and choosing to gaze at him for any old reason. The nasty thing was letting him know that it smelled his weakness. The demon smelled his fear. It was letting Marcus know that he was going to be eaten in a few short seconds.
Clio and Cy: The Apocalypse Page 16
