Setting Things Right, Part 6: assigned - confrontation with a guard - the motor pool - Watson - a two day pass - requisitioning a motorcycle (500 hits)
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Submitted by X54 (View user info) at 2008-10-28 23:38:40 EDT
Setting Things Right, Part 6: assigned - confrontation with a guard - the motor pool - Watson - a two day pass - requisitioning a motorcycle
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/118878 I meet Colonel Barnes - a standoff - their mission and mine
Part 2: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119080 I depart with the convoy - a burned down house - waiting for Mr. Robbins - reflections on surviving the pandemic
Part 3: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119174 meet the Robbins family - kids in the attic - a hero - an impromptu cesarean - thin ice
Part 4: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119299 Grumpy collects - escape attempt - disinfecting the house - the colonel's pet
Part 5: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119378 a bit about me - the colonel's strategy - our next big contract - the refinery
Part 6:
Colonel Barnes assigned me to first squad, Special Action platoon. He planned to fill the whole squad with survivors as soon as he found more of us, but for the time being it was just me and Grumpy. The men who'd been out to the Umeda house comprised the other three squads of the Special Action platoon.
We had our own separate barracks located in the headquarters warehouse with the mess hall and the supply room and the arms room. The other men of the battalion lived in the second warehouse, which was barracks only. They called the unit a battalion, but it looked closer to a reinforced company. The Special Action platoon reported directly to Colonel Barnes, the battalion commander.
Except for Watson and the three men who helped burn the Robbins house, the rest of Special Action platoon had returned to the refinery the day before. We saw them standing in formation as we pulled into the compound. Colonel Barnes told Grumpy to get me signed in. Then he took the others out on a training mission, probably to prepare for the upcoming contract on illegal aliens.
The mess hall had finished serving, but Grumpy persuaded the cooks to let us eat anyway. After breakfast, I turned my shotgun and machete in to the arms room and drew my bedding from Supply. Although Colonel Barnes had instructed me to turn in all my weapons, I kept my Glock concealed in the lower right pocket of my field jacket. Grumpy didn't notice or he didn't care. Then I stowed my gear under my bunk and took a long nap. Grumpy and I were the only ones in the barracks.
That afternoon, he offered to show me the town and the beach. The fog had burned off by then and the tops of the oil storage tanks were in view. Stark against the lead sky, an oily flame flickered atop a superstructure of rusting pipes and scaffolding like the Olympic Torch of the damned. If anything, the place looked even more bleak by day than it had in the early morning gloom. Nothing green grew anywhere.
When we reached the main entrance we were stopped by the guard, a kid with blue eyes and zits that chafed against his puss encrusted chinstrap. "Do you have a pass?"
"We don't need a pass," said Grumpy. "We're in the SA platoon."
The kid stepped back, unshouldered his shotgun. Aiming at the ground in front of us, he said, "I wasn't told anything about that." He spit tobacco juice off to one side, squirting it nearly over his shoulder, then smeared the clinging, brown strand from his pimply cheek.
"Who has to sign the pass?" said Grumpy.
"Captain or above." He tapped the imaginary captain's bars on his helmet.
"We don't have anyone in our chain of command who can sign," I said. "Colonel Barnes is out on training and we report directly to him. Give us a break, huh?"
He shook his head and smiled like someone had just given him a plateful of eggs.
"Give it up," said Grumpy. "You'll never get anywhere with this one."
I looked at the kid. "He's all right. He's just doing his job." I walked up to him, off to one side. He tensed but didn't raise the shotgun. I glanced back and forth between his eyes and smiled. "It's no problem. We can go some other time, right?" I nodded at him until he nodded back. A tingle ran up my spine as I extended my hand. "This kid's all right."
He actually took my hand. I could have killed him so easily it made me laugh.
Startled, he leapt back like a cat. "Colonel Barnes did mention you guys," he said hotly. "You're not allowed off base unless you're escorted by him personally." He sneered and pointed the shotgun at my chest.
Just then Watson drove up in the Escalade with the other three men. The kid stopped them. Watson rolled down his window. "Do you want an olive in your martini?" asked the kid.
"What?" said Watson.
"Olive," said the kid.
"I don't know the password."
"Why not?"
"Because, Fuckhead, we were supposed to be back yesterday and I only know yesterday's password. Didn't Colonel Barnes tell you we'd be coming in?"
"No."
On a whim, I stepped up. "Sure he did. He told you that when he told you we weren't allowed off base."
The kid's reddening face told me I was right.
"You're not bullshitting anyone," said Grumpy.
"Go on in," said the kid without taking his eyes off Grumpy. "And you two get the fuck out of here." He nodded toward the barracks.
Grumpy stood looking at the kid. "Go on!" said the kid, motioning with the shotgun's barrel.
"Grumpy," said Watson. "Give you a lift. Come on, Swanson."
I climbed in back and Grumpy climbed in front. The man next to me squeezed tight up against the other man in back, as far away from me as possible. No one spoke as we drove to the barracks and got out.
"You want to see the motor pool?" said Grumpy.
We unloaded the Escalade, then Grumpy and I rode with Watson around back to the motor pool. "Watson's all right," said Grumpy. "He's not uptight like the others."
Watson laughed. "Don't go starting any of your shit."
"Want to hear what really happened at the Robbins's?"
Watson shook his head.
"You ever see a baby born?" said Grumpy.
Watson stopped in front of a corrugated metal garage and jumped out and went inside. Two dozen vehicles were parked haphazardly around in the oily dirt, everything from tanker trucks to motorcycles.
"This place is pretty low speed," I said.
Grumpy snorted. "What were you expecting? The 82nd Airborne in the California Volunteer Defense Force?"
We climbed out and followed Watson through the roll up door. He stood talking to a fat man in coveralls sitting behind a metal desk littered with greasy auto parts and cardboard boxes. "Sergeant Pierce," said Watson. "We've got a new man." He motioned to me. "This is Swanson. What's your rank, anyway?"
"You another one of Barnes's boys?" said Sergeant Pierce, sizing me up.
"I guess so." I was a Staff Sergeant before the pandemic. Sergeant Pierce wore no rank that I could see.
"You got a driver's license?"
I showed him my military driver's license, which I still carried. It showed my rank. "Good," he said. "You'n me gonna get along fine."
"What do you use those motorcycles for?" I said. Two olive drab Kawasaki KLR 650s. I had one in Pakistan that I confiscated from a man who might have been Al Queda.
"The fuck should I know? Once they leave the motor pool, I don't care what they do with'em. Long as they bring'em back in one piece." He signed for the Escalade and hung the keys on the wall behind him. Watson turned to go.
"Nice meeting you," I said. I took another look at the Kawis on the way out.
Watson said to me, "I didn't know you were a survivor until after the fire."
"And?"
"I couldn't tell. You seem pretty normal. Not like Grumpy."
Grumpy drew a circle around his ear with his index finger. "Never mind him. He took a round in the head a while back. He's never been the same."
"Fuck you."
"Did you really take a round in the head?" I said.
He rolled his eyes girlishly. "No, I didn't take a round in the head. It glanced off my skull. Doctor said I was lucky."
"You've got a steel plate in your head!" said Grumpy. "Show him."
Watson removed his cap and leaned forward so I could see the top of his forehead. A discolored metal disc the diameter of a golf ball stood out, surrounded by a perimeter of dark, dead looking skin. Wiry black hair, like pubic hair, grew around it. As he replaced his cap, I saw the front brim was black and crusty.
"I think you're aggravating it by wearing your hat," I said. "Is the skin supposed to grow back over it?"
"It is what it is," he said.
We walked to the mess hall and stood waiting for the cooks to open up as the line grew behind us. Watson stayed to eat, but Grumpy and I took our meals back to our cots and ate by ourselves. I was thinking how much better I liked it at the Umeda's house after they were all dead.
"I'm going to borrow one of those motorcycles," I said. "I have to get out of here."
Grumpy looked at me. "Are you coming back?"
"Probably," I lied.
"If you give Sergeant Pierce a fifth of Captain Morgan's, you won't have to steal it."
"Where am I going to get that?"
Grumpy unlocked a wooden footlocker and retrieved a bottle. He handed it toward me, but pulled it back as I reached. "Hear me out, first," he said. "Give this place a chance. You're going to get an MP5SD and all the ammo you can shoot. We won't be spending much time around this place. It'll be fun, especially with the new contract." He handed me the bottle. "Stay out of trouble. If you get into trouble, Barnes won't be able to help you. Don't let anyone out there know you're a survivor. Barnes won't hold it against you if you come back in a few days as long as you stay out of trouble."
I studied the full bottle. "How many others have there been besides us?"
"You mean here? I knew Barnes before the pandemic. I've been with him since the beginning. There've been a few others. But they all fucked up and that was the end of them. Barnes couldn't help them."
I stood up and shouldered my ruck. "I'm not going to fuck up."
Two guards stood smoking in the dark outside the now closed garage. A thin line of light shone under the roll-up door. "I need to see Sergeant Pierce," I said.
"You got a requisition?"
"Yes."
"Let's see it."
"My orders are to show it to Sergeant Pierce."
"Sergeant Pierce don't want to see no one without a requisition."
"He's expecting me."
"Is he? What's your name."
"Morgan," I said. "Corporal Morgan."
Both guards snorted.
"Sergeant Pierce!" I shouted, gripping my Glock in my field jacket pocket.
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Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-10-29 08:01:23 EDT (#)
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Submitted by woolfe (user info) at 2008-10-29 04:20:54 EDT (#)
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Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2008-10-29 02:07:44 EDT (#)
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This post looks lonely all un-rated n' shit.
You seem like a terrific writer though - so yer credit is good with me.