Skyfire (27 page)

HUGHES

             
Here we go again.  Once more into the fray blah blah blah. 
“Karl, let’s roll.”

              “You got it, man.”

              “Callie, we’ll be back soon.  Karl will check in with Jack every few minutes.  Do your best to keep the kids calm and anything you can for that old dude if he wakes up.”

              “On it,” Callie said.

              “Jackie,  watch your cornhole down here,” said Karl.  “Radio checks every five minutes, right?”  It was the first time Karl had shown any evidence of apprehension. 

              “Of course, man,” said Jack.  “Let’s get this shit done.”

              “What’s our route up there, Hughes?” said Karl.  “Aren’t you just like a total fag and you know this place or something?”

              “Fuck you.  Let me see that map again.”

              Ronak’s sphere took on a very low, blue hue.  It was close to the cluster of three casualties by the crook in the “small mammals” hallway. 

              “Hey Jack, why don’t we move these couple of bodies over to the other end of the hall,” said Callie.  “You know, kids?” 

             
“Let’s do it.  Harrison, cover our back while we do this. ”

              “Roger, sir.”

              “Oh shit, one thing real quick.”  Jack held down the button on his handset and turned his head slightly to the right.  “Green Dragon 1-3, Green Dragon 1-3, this is Warrior 2, over.”

              “Green Dragon 1-3.  Not going to lie, kind of thought you were dead!  What’s your situation?”  It was Chief Rudich, slightly crackled.

              “Yeah, not so much with the dead yet, Chief.  We have a CCP set up in a centrally located area about halfway between the main front entrance and the exit that dumps you onto Columbus Avenue.”

              “You got the doc yet?”

              “Negative,” said Jack, “we ran into some resistance along the way.  We found three survivors – young twin boys and an old man.  The kids are ambulatory, but the old man is unconscious.  I have no idea on the extent of the man’s injuries, but the kids are OK, at least physically.”

              “Sir, um, I hate to overstate the obvious, but you realize we only have one bird and the Doc is supposed to have a family, right?”

             
Shut the fuck up. Not now.
 

              “We’ll make it work, Chief.”  Jack began getting lost in his thoughts.

              “Warrior 2, Green Dragon 1-3.”

              “Warrior 2,” said Jack. 

             
Please, no more shit about the casualties.  I don’t give a shit if we have to do multiple trips.  I thought saving motherfuckers was the whole point of being in the Army!

             
“Roger Warrior 2, we’ll do whatever we have to do to accommodate any casualties you find.  Fuck it, right?  If we lose that part of us, we lose everything.” 

             
Jack and Callie began methodically repositioning the dead bodies and gore as far away from the children as possible. 

             
My respect for them just shot up 100%.  I always thought no one in the world should ever have to bear witness to shit like this.  It’s not healthy.  It’s even less healthy to get used to it.

             
“Karl, Ron - here’s what I got,”  Trent said in a loud whisper.  “Here’s us in this hallway by the IMAX theater in the middle of the museum.”

              “I stopped going to IMAX theaters when I saw Dr. Manhattan’s giant blue dong in
Watchmen
,” said Karl.  “It ruined IMAX for me.”

              “Thanks, Karl.  That was both relevant and appreciated,” said Trent. 
Two minutes without verbal diarrhea please? 
“Anyway, here’s us in the middle.  Here are the stairwells heading to the top floors.  From here to where we need to be, I think the best route is up the main stairwells at the front of the museum, then through the dinosaur exhibit on the fourth floor, heading west until we get to this southern stairwell, between ‘Wallach Orientation Center’ and ‘Milstein Hall of Advanced Mammals.’”

              “That Herbert Milstein.  Such a Mensch.  Mitzvah’s out the dick-hole, if memory serves,” said Karl.  

             
Ugh.  This is the only way he can get through shit. 
“Right.  Anyway, once we get to this stairwell, we walk to the top and go methodically down every hallway, office, archive, and laboratory.  No stone unturned.  With Mark Kerr’s magic fairy dust orb we can detect whatever we need to.  Room by room, inch by inch.”

              “Dude, remember Mark Kerr?  He’s all fat now and I think he sells cars,” Karl said.

              “The ‘Smashing Machine’ documentary is one of the saddest things I’ve sat through in my entire life, but let’s move onto more pressing matters.  Legate Ronak, you ready?” 

             
“Indeed I am, Captain Hughes.  Let us proceed.” 

              They walked out of the Hallway of Small Mammals, back toward the main entrance.  Moonlight danced through the musty room’s floating dust.  Ronak’s sphere cast dynamic shadows throughout the areas they walked. 

             
Was that a dream?
 
I keep thinking I see those shadowy shaking figures from my dream.  Fuck, I don’t even know what’s real anymore.  I just want to get through this.  Do my part, then go back to finding Emma. 

             
“You OK?” Karl asked.

              “Far from it, man.  You?”

              “This shit’s worse than that strip club in that back alley in the Czech Republic.”

              “Dude, that shit was in some old lady’s house,” said Trent.  “It was awesome.”

              “You ended up having a two-hour conversation with a 96 year-old Hungarian immigrant who spoke English because she worked as a whore in London during World War II.”  

              “Masha was the shit!” said Trent. 

              “I got my dick sucked by a girl allegedly named Jenny who told me she loved me!”

              “And I bet you had a special connection,” said Trent.

              “Yeah!” 

             
I don’t even know if this idiot is joking.

             
“Gentlemen, which stairwell shall we ascend?” asked Ronak.

              The group stood silent for a moment.   

              “Let’s take the eastern stairwell, whichever side is less blocked,” said Trent.

              “How do you know?” asked Karl.

              “Captain motherfucking Picard!”

              “Are you kidding me?” said Karl.  “How can this possibly be related to your faggot-ass nerd shit?”

             
“
There was this episode where Captain Picard and the ship’s doctor, Doctor Crusher - who was hot as fuck for her age - were stranded in the wilderness.  The plot twist was that they could read each other’s minds.”

              “Why could they read each other’s minds?” asked Karl.

              “They were imprisoned or something.” Trent hated being interrupted.

              “What makes them read each other’s minds in jail?”

              “Dude, who fucking cares? That’s not the point!”

              “Sounds like a weak-ass fucking TV show, dude.”

             
“ANYWAY,” said Trent.  “Doctor Crusher was getting butt-hurt that they couldn’t find a way home or whatever, and the Captain had to make a choice at a fork in the road.  He chose left, or who cares, but the point is he made a choice.”

              “Then what?”  Karl seemed legitimately interested.

              “Well then the beautiful, intelligent, fire-crotched Beverly Crusher asked him why he’d chosen that path, and he made up some bullshit reason.  But she could still read his mind.”

              “Oh shit, nigga!”

             
“Anyway, she calls the Captain on his bullshit, and one of the most important leadership lessons came out the back end.  I use it to this day, for better or worse,” said Trent.

              “I’m all in, spill it.”

              “I’m paraphrasing, but here it is.  If you don’t know the answer to something and you need to make a choice, use the best information available at the time and make a choice.  Act confident no matter what, like you know it as gospel.  It’s the only way to get people to follow you when you have no idea what the fuck is going on.”

              “And how often was that for you?” asked Karl.

              “Almost every fucking time anything happened on a deployment.”

              “No plan survives first contact, I guess,” Karl acknowledged. In an odd way, he and Trent naturally fed off each other.               

              “Now we need to not die so we can save this curry-smelling ass-tard and get everything back to normal.  Then you can go watch my faggot-ass nerd shit on Netflix, as you so eloquently put it.”

              “Good luck with that, Hughes.  I’m glad your gay ass finally watches football though.”

              “Fantasy football, man.  It’s like a slave auction combined with Dungeons and Dragons and the stock market.  It’s the best.  I don’t feel bad - these assholes make more money than I will ever see in my life.”

              “Jesus Christ.  You are such a - ”

              “Gentlemen, now that we’ve determined our route, should we not proceed according to plan?”

              “Legate Ronak, my apologies,” said Trent.  “We often dwell on the stupid to get through the unfortunate.”
  We must look like children to Ron’s species.  Whatever, they have a fucking millennium on us.  We’re gonna be good to go when we reach that point.  ‘Murcah or whatever, I guess.”

             
“Trent, that is quite alright,” said Ronak.  “I find it refreshing.  People in my society lack passion about anything.” 

             
Shit, this thing is calling me by my first name.  He likes me.  Why is my first answer always “kill?”  Fuck.  I know.  Time to be honest with myself. 

             
“I like your idea, Hughes,” said Karl.  “Let’s use these stairs.  We’ll probably just die anyway and be some statistic on the TV news no one cares about.”

              “Excellent.  Let’s keep moving,” said Trent.
My dad came to this country with nothing.  To get a green card he agreed to register for the draft.  After he signed the papers he asked, “Where is Vietnam?”  That’s bullshit.  It’s all numbers to everyone who didn’t participate. 
“We can discuss the finer points of some hot-as-fuck blonde in a miniskirt talking about us on Fox News when we’re dead.”

              “I bet it’ll be with some bullshit statistics from a ‘think tank’ that she reads off a teleprompter.  And Poorly,” said Karl.

              “Yeah, but with our luck it won’t be some chick in her twenties. It’ll be some awful fifty-five year-old former prosecutor from Georgia who’s a fundamentalist Christian, wearing whore makeup and a pants-suit designed for moms who want to go back to work after shitting out two equally awful kids,” said Trent.

              “I know, right?  Shit’s crazy, man,” said Karl.

              They were passing through an area of particularly nasty looking carnage.  “Sweet, look at this,” said Trent.  

             
“Ron, anything alive here?”  Karl scanned the top landing of the stairwell with his tac-light.

              “Negative, Major McMullin.  We can proceed along our planned route.”

              The grisly scene continued throughout the dark passageways of the second floor. 

             
Stairs are still open.  Good. 
“Let’s keep moving to the third level,” said Trent.

              “Yep,” Karl said.

              They stepped over bodies strewn about the stairs.  Each passing sight was more macabre than the last.  They were becoming numb to it. 
It’s like every car bomb ever created exploded in this one fucking building.  Jesus Christ.  Is THIS our nature?
 

              The third floor’s main stairwell landing was just as bad as the second’s.  They continued to the fourth floor.  Barricades were everywhere – tables, chairs, bones from dinosaur exhibits – anything that could be used, including human body parts.  It was gruesome.  The entrance to the main dinosaur exhibit had the highest barricade, about sixteen feet, impressively obscuring everything beyond it, all the way to the extravagant vaulted ceilings.

              “Damn, what now?  Get out the map,” said Karl.

              “This way.  Not Captain Picard-ing right now, I promise.”  Trent pointed toward a less impressive exhibit labeled “Ornithischian Dinosaurs.”  This hall of armored, horned dinosaurs had been one of Trent’s favorites when he was a kid.  The creatures had inspired his sense of curiosity, made him wonder how they came to be, why they weren’t around anymore, what nature could make possible. 
My dad watched me try to sketch a shitty Stegasaurus for an hour in here.  Never thought this place would be my own personal hell.  This fucking sucks.  The memory is ruined forever.