GAGE: A Bad Boy Military Romance (35 page)

General Peters, to General Chesney

I understand your concerns in regard to public relations. If I may be blunt, I don’t think it matters. People are going to come to those conclusions regardless of what we choose to do with Cherovitz. If you really think the shock therapy will make a difference, we can give it a try. But in my twenty-six years of experience, it’s hopeless. I’ve always found that shock therapy works better in correcting attitude.

Come to think of it, Sergeant Sykes would be good candidate for shock therapy. But for Greg, I would say our best options are to neutralize him or perform a lobotomy.

A lobotomy’s pretty cruel, if you ask me. Plus, then you still need to figure out what to do with him after he’s brain dead.

But it’s your call at the end of the day. Let me know by tonight. Neutralize him, shock him, or poke him in the brain?

General Peters, Ph. D, M.D., F.A.A.E.M.

P.S.: I’m sorry to hear Sykes is being such a pain in the ass. A couple more weeks and some Polack inmate will be a pain in his ass, if you know what I mean.

P.P.S.: Attached to this e-mail is my wife’s meatloaf recipe. She said that Lucy asked for it at the Christmas party. She also told me to tell you to go easy on the salt because the soy sauce already makes it very salty. Between you and me, it could use a little more salt.

Three weeks had passed since the date on the transmission. If it was true, Greg was most likely dead, and Hunter was most likely in a Polish prison. I felt sick. The worst part of it all was that I was too late. By the time my own story reached the news, Greg would have been dead and Hunter would be days away from being sent to Poland—or maybe to shock therapy.

The flashing of the cameras was blinding. I had to close my eyes and cover my face with my hands. But I stayed outside. I didn’t care if they saw me crying. Everything else about me was made public. So I cried there on the steps, in front of the whole country. I knew that my sad, pathetic face would be on the cover of every newspaper in the morning.

But it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Nintipi was out of control. I was beginning to lose count of the days that I’d been there, waiting for things to die down so I could make my move. It only took me six days to get from Duckwater to Nintipi. A cargo train took me most of the way, and I only had to hike about ninety miles from the Kansas border to the town of Nintipi.

When I arrived, there was a small crowd outside of Kyla’s house. I should have made my move then, in the night when the crowd dispersed. But I waited, worried that I’d be caught by some perverted, sneaky paparazzi waiting behind a bush for a nude shot. I should have went for her then, but I didn’t.

Now, there must have been hundreds of people from all over the country outside of her house, many of whom stuck around all night—probably because they had nowhere else to go. From my perch at the top of the hill, I could see the glowing red, “No Vacancy” signs for Nintipi’s one hotel and two motels. Some of the reporters were even sleeping in their vans along Kyla’s street.

I had a tent set up two miles into the woods that hugged Nintipi’s city limits. It wasn’t much, but it was hidden, far from any road and disguised from any search helicopter that might have been out looking for me.

Every evening, once the sun was down, I would hike down the hillside to Walter Trout’s farmhouse. Walter Trout was an old, stubborn man who refused to move into a retirement home. His children, who were old enough to be my parents, lived across the country, and only visited once every year or so to try and convince Walt to sell his farmhouse and move into a retirement home. Walt always said no and his children always got angry and went to the town meetings and tried to do something about it and then they would go back across the country having accomplished nothing at all, cursing Walt’s name under their breath as they went.

Walt was almost completely deaf and blind, and his case wasn’t helped any by his worsening Alzheimer's. But shit Walt, if you want to live out the rest of your days alone at your ranch, then no one should be able to stop you.

Each evening I would enter in through the back door, which he left unlocked, and I would take a bit of food and the morning newspaper, which was always left in the same spot on the arm of the couch. The day after I arrived in Nintipi, I also borrowed his hunting rifle. It had an expensive scope on it that I used to keep an eye on the commotion out front of Kyla’s house. I also thought it was a good idea to take the rifle away from the bitter, old man with Alzheimer’s whose house I was breaking into every day.

I decided to risk making my daily hike to the ranch early, the day the crowds suddenly grew exponentially in size. I figured it was only a matter of time before I became front page material, but I thought it would be under other circumstances. I thought the headline would read, “Manhunt for dangerous pedophile!” But that wasn’t the case. Somehow, Kyla had gotten her hands on some serious documents—how, I had no idea—and released them to the media. Perfect timing too; one day later and there would have been mobs scouring the woods for me, the dangerous pedophile. She beat the army to the punch, and now the army was fumbling to put on a smiling face.

I read the newspaper on my way back to my perch. I stopped when I came across a leaked transmission, taken from that filthy Chesney bastard’s e-mail.

Greg was dead.

I wanted to think the document was fake, but it knew too much to be fake. It knew Chesney’s name, it knew my name and Greg’s name. It knew that we were separated, and it knew that I was supposed to be in Poland. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that they were really sending me to a Polish prison. Bunch of cunts.

It explained why Kyla was crying, and Kyla’s crying explained a lot. In previous articles, she claimed I was already dead—that they killed me to cover their tracks, the same way they tried to kill Lieutenant Meraux to cover their tracks. But the tears streaming down Kyla’s face weren’t just painful-reminder tears. They were more than that. She was broken, devastated, like someone had just given her terrible news.

Which made sense.

Kyla had always been a clever girl. Of course she never really thought I was really dead. It was a bluff, to get the government to show their hand. Hell, it probably would have worked too, had I not taken their hand and run with it. Kyla’s plan was much better than my “run first, figure out the rest later” plan.

I wondered if Chesney was clever enough to realize that was the plan, too? That Kyla didn’t actually care about releasing government secrets and exposing military lies—why would she? Considering the claims she was making, that the military was neutralizing friendlies to hide information, why would she think she was immune? She wanted to be proved wrong, even though she was absolutely right, the sneaky little brat.

I could just imagine Chesney bringing me into his office, sitting me down, huffing and puffing about the damned media. After mumbling a bunch of expletives, he’d say something like, “Pack your stupid bags. We’re sending you back to your stupid little town.” Before letting me out of his office, he’d make sure I knew what I had to do. He’d want me to stand in front of the reporters and say, “I’ve been at a PTSD clinic for the past six weeks, Greg was there, too, but he killed himself with his belt in the bathroom. And we really were just peace-keeping in the Congo, Sammy died trying to save everyone, and as far as I know, Lieutenant Meraux died in a roadside bomb and those really were a bunch of filthy terrorists in that little Iraqi town. And there really was a radicalized Chinaman there, too, as far as I know.” It wasn’t just what the government wanted. It was what Kyla wanted to.

Had the opportunity been given to me, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. I’d be down there in Nintipi with Kyla and that would have been enough for me.

Now, I needed a different plan. I couldn’t just walk down into town, say my little speech in front of one-hundred reporters and call it a day. It was too late for that. The story had become too big, and the media had managed to poke too many holes in the government’s cute little PTSD-treatment tale. There would be too many questions that I couldn’t answer. And I only knew a tiny fraction of the story. Not to mention, if I turned up alive now, it wouldn’t be the military killing Kyla; it would be the troop-loving American purists.

The Nintipi Times was only a six page newspaper, and it was a notoriously biased paper at that. I didn’t know what they were saying on CNN or ABC. I just knew what Tim Gliggles of the Nintipi Times had to say. Gliggles was the kid who wrote the article for our school’s newspaper after Sammy’s UFO trick. “Aliens are among us, unknown radioactive substance found at crash site.” The substance was a mixture of formaldehyde taken from Mrs. Ziegler’s biology classroom, and green Gatorade.

Near the back of the paper was a picture of Chesney, trying to cover his face from a crowd of reporters. “When asked, General Chesney refused to comment,” the article said. You could practically see the veins in Chesney’s forehead throbbing in that still, black and white photo. His jowls hung low like a frustrated bulldog. Even the cigar hanging from his mouth looked defeated, curving downwards as if Chesney was some defeated Looney Tunes character.

With me M.I.A., the government was clueless. They couldn’t do shit. They couldn’t put out a warrant for my arrest without admitting they’d been lying. They couldn’t deal with Kyla without proving to the world Kyla was right. They couldn’t claim I killed myself, or that I ran away from my PTSD treatment because they knew I could show up at any second and prove them wrong. And with every day that went by that they did nothing at all, they sunk deeper into their hole. More and more evidence was popping up every day and their situation was spiralling out of control.

It was the perfect fucking situation. We were in control. We had them by the balls. I just needed to get to Kyla and find a way to sneak out of town. If Kyla suddenly disappeared, then the military was seriously fucked. The story would really burst open at the seams. To make things especially damning, I would stage it to look like a secret military operation.

That night, I snuck down into the town. I wasn’t too worried about being recognized, seeing as I was hardly recognizable with my thin face and thick beard. Still, I kept my distance from Kyla’s trailer park. The little shack that they’d given me had been trashed, probably raided by some desperate reporters looking for some juicy evidence. The place was a mess, drawers were left open, my things were scattered all over the ground. Nothing was missing except for the coffee maker but I didn’t miss it.

In the closet, where I left it after taking it down from the wall, was the framed special ops outfit. I put it on, along with the military-issued boots, and the black face mask, which was difficult to slip over my beard.

The next stage of my plan was shit.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

It wasn’t a sound that woke me up. It was a smell—a horrible, rancid odour that became stronger and stronger until I finally sprung up from my bed.

As I did, someone grabbed my face and muffled my scream. The hand on my face felt strange, like gritty rubber—some bizarre cross between latex and Velcro. I tried to fight back and pull my face away, but every little facial movement hurt, burned, like I was rubbing my face against sandpaper. Worse than the burn was the smell. Lord, that smell made my eyes water and my stomach turn.

When I stopped fighting, I realized the attacker was waiting for me to relax. I couldn’t see his face. All I could see was black. It was like I’d been grabbed by a foul-smelling, invisible man. Even with both of my hands, I couldn’t pry his single muffling hand loose.

“Relax,” said a voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.” It was a male voice, too low to distinguish. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

I could make out the contour of a hand as it rose up and pulled back a mask. He was a thin, sick-looking man. His black and grey beard was thick and unkempt. His eyes were—Hunter’s eyes.

It was Hunter.

I let go of his hand and wrapped my arms around his body. He released my face and hugged me back, lifting me off the bed. The foul smell suddenly ceased to exist, along with all of the pestering reporters. Nothing else mattered. Hunter was back, alive, holding me in his arms. I could feel his ribs through his black suit. He’d lost a lot of weight since I’d seen him last, two months before.

“We need to get out of here quickly,” he said. “Pack some clothes.”

He tossed me a bag. That’s when I noticed the house looked different, strangely neat, curiously perfect. Hunter had moved things around for seemingly no reason at all. The pictures on the mantle were sorted in a perfect line, the couch cushions were neatly placed—he even spaced the candles on my dresser in a perfectly spaced line. He’d made it look like the house had never been lived in, like it was some uninhabited show home.

“Leave that,” he said as I picked up my favourite coat, the coat I’d worn everywhere for the past eight years.

“I love this coat,” I said.

“I know. Leave it.”

Bag packed, he took me by the hand and led me out the back door. He checked the coast before taking me to the open sewer hole in the center of our lawn—the putrid hole the landlord had promised to fix many months before but never did. The cover was moved aside, exposing the ladder that went down into the sewer.

It wasn’t the most pleasant forty-five minutes of my life, navigating those Nintipi sewers.

We emerged at the far end of town. Hunter helped me out from the hole. I had the sudden urge to hug him again. “Oh my God, Hunter. I’m so happy you’re alive,” I said. “I love you.”

“You smell like shit,” he said. My face was nestled into his chest but I could still feel him smirking.

He explained how he escaped from the army base and what his plan was, now that we were off the radar. I wasn’t surprised when he said, “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Hunter was a cowboy, a bad boy, a reckless vigilante. He got things done his way, and he didn’t let anyone tell him what to do. Nothing had changed since we were younger. It was no different than when we were in high school, and Hunter would get caught smoking in the bathroom. He never had a plan, but he never even got so much as a slap on the wrist.

Hunter was a survivor. He’d managed to prove that time and time again, in the Congo and in that military base.

He led me up the hill to the woods. “Are you okay to hike ten miles or so?” he asked.

“I think so.” It was surreal, looking back and seeing nothing but Nintipi’s faint glow at our backs, knowing that we’d probably never return. For years, I was so sure that Nintipi was going to be where I would live and die. My tombstone would read, “The Witch of Nintipi, and never anything else.” But now, to think there was a whole life ahead of us…

“We’ll get on the train and go north. I know where we can cross the border into Canada. They won’t find us there.”

“What about Greg?” I asked.

Hunter was silent. He heard me, but he had no intention of responding. Unfortunately, his silence answered my question.

A gunshot rang out from behind us. We both crouched down, instinctively covering our heads. Hunter reached down at his waist, at an empty side-arm holster. “Shit,” he muttered, realizing he was unarmed. He shook his head.

I was terrified, my heart nearly exploding through my chest. Hunter looked more frustrated than anything, like a man who just lost everything in Vegas. He turned to face the gunman. Once my heart had calmed down some, I turned as well.

I didn’t recognize the man pointing a heavy-looking rifle at us. But he looked like a soldier, buzzed head, clean-shaved, dressed in grey camouflage. He was standing behind a tree, which split in two at his chest. His rifle was propped up in the split, anchored for an accurate shot.

My guess was that he was one of the Reserves, out looking for Hunter. I wondered if he would kill us. We were still so close enough to Nintipi that people would have heard the shot. But it was still dark enough that they wouldn’t be able to see anything.

But it was their chance—their chance to “neutralize” us, to get rid of Hunter without raising too many flags.

But the man didn’t shoot. He just stood there with his finger on the trigger, aiming in our direction.