Ever Onward (3 page)

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 cocked 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.