Maneuvers, Page 2

The Lord Admiral of the Fleet of the People watched the surveillance feed from the Fourth Sergeant Grenadier’s station, looking over the man’s shoulder. The Grenadier Commander stood nervously behind him.

  He smiled as the Malakshian woman punched the walls and screamed at her captain. She was as fierce a warrior as the Malakshians from his planet.

  The Captain ignored the woman. He gloated. The Lord Admiral recognized that look. The look of thinking he was in charge. The look of smug self-satisfaction. The look of supremacy. He smiled at that look also. He knew it well.

  “Calm down, Irina,” Stanley finally said, tired of her tantrum.

  She glared at him with hatred and punched the wall again. Wasn’t her hand sore yet? She had been raging for the entire twenty minutes since the Lord Admiral left, ranting about the aliens. She accused the Lord Admiral of attempting to deceive them, among many other things.

  She had been so smitten with him when they first met, Stanley thought. What had happened? Didn’t she realize the position they were in? Stanley had been offered the position of ambassador for Earth to the Hrwang, to speak on behalf of the entire human race. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

  He was glad he hadn’t been on Earth when its leaders engaged in the madness of attacking the Hrwang. It put him in a position of objectivity when it came to dealing with the aliens. He would be able to make things better, to restore the relationship between Earth and Hrwang, and together they would bring interstellar travel to the human race. Stanley’s name would be legendary, like Columbus or Galileo.

  Maybe cities would even be named after him.

  He chuckled inwardly. He was getting a little carried away. There was a lot he had to do between now and then. For one, he had to get Irina Samovitch to calm down a little.

  “That’s enough, Commander. Our hosts will be returning soon.”

  She punched the wall rapidly, using her open palm so she didn’t break fingers, and started to yell at Stanley again. He had taken her abuse when he was captain of the Beagle, but now he was ambassador from Earth and he didn’t need to take it any longer.

  He stood.

  He loved the way the magnetic suit held him on the bench, yet allowed him to stand normally, providing the illusion of gravity. The Hrwang were so clever, so ingenious. Earth would learn so much from them.

  He walked over to his second-in-command, debating the best way to get her to calm down.

  “Irina, please, they’ll be back soon.”

  She glanced at the door, then returned to glaring at him.

  “Commander. It’s time to be professional.”

  She almost punched him, stopping her hand mid swing. Stanley flinched involuntarily and berated himself for his weakness. He tried to stand tall and glare back at her. He had been so happy and she was ruining it. Now he felt anger, and he directed that anger at its source. Her.

  “That is enough,” he said harshly, trying to imitate the voice commanders used on television. “Stand down!”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, standing straight suddenly. She clasped her hands behind her back and stared straight ahead, looking directly at Stanley’s chest.

  It worked. Stanley kept his face harsh, but pictured a big grin on it. He could command others. He had commanded, and Commander Samovitch had obeyed. Just like Pavlov’s dog. You order military people around and they follow you, just like trained monkeys. She had taught him an important lesson today. He vowed not to forget it.

  The hatch cycled open and the Lieutenant Grenadier stepped in with two new suits.

  “I apologize,” he said. “We did not know your size when you first arrived.”

  “No problem,” Stanley said graciously. “Thank you. The Lord Admiral said there would be some sort of ceremonial meal. Where will that be?”

  “It will be here. Soon. Please change quickly.” The Lieutenant Grenadier left.

  The Lord Admiral watched as the captain and the commander turned their backs to each other, changing quickly from the ill fitting suits to the new ones. Several other stations also monitored the feed, most of the Grenadiers zooming in on the woman. He debated saying something, for discipline’s sake, but most of the men hadn’t seen a woman in a long time and it was better to let them watch her change. For discipline’s sake.

  Jayla didn’t feel like she could move from the spot she was in. The hospital bed was so comfortable. Not as comfortable as her own bed, but comfortable because she felt safe. The rising sun warmed the room, casting a bright light that cheered her.

  She rolled her head to the side, not even wanting to pick it up off its pillow, to see her sister.

  Jada still sat in the wheelchair.

  Jayla sat up in guilt. She’d left her sister sitting in the wheelchair all night. She’d just been so tired, so stressed, that when she lay down, she passed out. It wasn’t her fault. If Jada would just snap out of it, she could take care of herself.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with the girl. That was incorrect. She knew what was wrong, she just didn’t understand why Jada had become so catatonic. Others had been through worse, right? They survived. They walked and talked and fed themselves despite the horrors they experienced. Why couldn’t her sister do the same? Why couldn’t she be stronger?

  Guilt accompanied those thoughts, and the accumulated guilt drove Jayla out of bed to check on her sister.

  She stood up gingerly, her legs and feet sore, her muscles tired. The stress of rescuing her sister, of escaping the old man, of finding the abandoned town, the crater, and the evacuated hospital, had worn her body out. She needed more rest.

  But more than rest, she needed to figure out what the smell was that now assaulted her. A pungent, ammonia-like odor.

  “Oh, girl, no.”

  It was her sister.

  She picked Jada up out of the wheelchair and the stench almost overpowered her. Jayla had watched nasty diapers being changed, but had never done it herself. This was worse.

  She carried her sister into the bathroom, unable to stop thinking about what she was getting on her hands and arms and her own clothes. She’d clean Jada up, then she’d have to clean herself up. She grimaced.

  Hospitals were the best places to clean people and things up, she learned quickly. She found everything she could think of, and more. An hour later she was clean, wearing two hospital gowns, one backwards and one forwards to cover both sides of her. Her sister, in one hospital gown, lay on a bed with a plastic sheet in case there was any more left in her. Jayla gave her a little water out of a cup and Jada drank it.

  She cleaned the bathroom and the wheelchair, washed their clothes, opened the doors to the room to let it air out, and felt good about what she had done, cleaning up after her sister. She had only thrown up once.

  Their room felt safe. In the hallway and the nurse’s station where she found the things she needed, she felt less safe. She needed to explore the hospital in the daylight to ‘clear’ the rest of it.

  She left her sister in the room, closing the door and blocking it from the outside with a couple of hospital beds. She didn’t know how that would help, but it seemed like the best she could do.

  Armed with her shotgun, wearing her two hospital gowns and a pair of slipper socks, she began to explore her surroundings.

  She knew the patient wing they were in was empty. She’d checked it out the night before, and with all of her comings and goings this morning, if anyone had been there, they would have made themselves known.

  She still checked each room again. She looked in the closets, under the beds if there were any in the room, and in each bathroom. With each room she became more nervous, more terrified of finding something. A sense of foreboding grew, and she knew that each room she checked would contain something, and her relief grew with each room
that didn’t.

  A headache also grew in her. It started at the base of her neck and spread up the back of her head and forward around her throat. Her fingers hurt from gripping the shotgun.

  Each room she searched became more painful than the previous.

  When she saw the man in the bathroom of the second to last room, she nearly fainted. She ran into the door as she fled the bathroom, the shotgun hitting the door and coming back and smacking her in the head. She screamed.

  The man never moved. She looked again and it was simply a hospital gown hanging from the shower head. She used the shotgun to pull it down and drop it into the bathtub. She swore at it.

  It kind of felt good to swear at it and not have her Daddy hush her. But then she felt guilty again.

  She also wondered why she hadn’t fired the shotgun. She had been so convinced the gown was a man that she should have shot it.

  It would have been bad. Tile splintering everywhere, shotgun pellets ricocheting around the bathroom, and the sound of the blast in a confined space. She was grateful she hadn’t fired.

  But she should have, shouldn’t she? If it had really been a man in the bathtub, she should have fired at him. What man would hide there, knowing someone was in the hospital? Would it have been a man like the old man that had kidnapped her sister?

  Her headache grew worse.

  If she needed to, would she be able to fire the gun she carried for her protection?

  As she moved out of the patient wing and into the rest of the hospital, she tried to focus on searching each room, but doubt nagged her. Could she fire the shotgun at someone?

  She remembered she had hit the man with the hiking stick, but that was instinct. She hadn’t even thought about it ahead of time. She just struck him. The panic and fear came later.

  So, why didn’t she shoot at the hospital gown when she thought it was a man hiding from her?

  Another room cleared. It was a waiting area with an attached x-ray lab. The little room the technician stepped into when running the equipment scared Jayla the most. She had to be practically in the room before she could determine it was empty. Someone hiding there would be able to grab her before she knew anyone was there.

  It terrified her.

  But the little room was empty.

  Would she be able to shoot if it weren’t?

  The doubt nagged her.

  She thought about shooting the gun to get over the fear of simply shooting. In that thought, she realized she only had what the gun came loaded with. If she fired for practice, she might fire the shell that would save her life. She couldn’t waste it.

  She hated being afraid.

  Another office area cleared.

  No one was in this hospital. She thought about getting on the intercom and yelling “Olly olly oxen free.”

  But the electricity wasn’t working, so the intercom probably wouldn’t work either.

  A door, well greased or something, slammed open harder than she intended, and the door knob broke through the dry wall. Someone was going to yell at her for that.

  Who, Jayla? she asked herself. Who was going to yell at her? No one is here.

  She found a lot more hospital than she’d seen in the dark the previous night. An entire wing she didn’t realize existed. It took over half an hour to check it out.

  The basement scared her more than the main floor. Most of the doors required key cards and she couldn’t open them. She decided if she couldn’t open them, no one else could either, so they should be safe.

  At the end of a quiet hallway she saw bright signs. She’d hit pay dirt. A cafeteria.

  She found food. Yogurt that was still somewhat cool and had only just expired tempted her. The fruit in the large refrigerator was fine. She didn’t know what to do with the four cartons of eggs.

  Melted ice cream coated the bottom of the freezer.

  A walk in locker contained a case of corn flake boxes, cans of vegetables and fruit, granola bars, and boxes of spaghetti noodles. She needed to figure out how to cook things without electricity.

  She picked up cornflakes and yogurt and carried them awkwardly with her shotgun back up the stairs.

  Jada swallowed a little of the yogurt after Jayla mixed it with water and she could practically drink it. Eating made Jayla feel better. Feeding her sister, even just a little, made her feel confident.

  When her clothes dried, Jayla dressed, put her shoes on, and went outside. She still carried the shotgun, peeked around every corner like there were thousands of bad guys waiting for her, but she felt safe.

  She went out to the SUV, opened it, and began carrying their supplies back into the hospital. She didn’t want to clutter up the room they were in, so she piled them all up in the nurse’s station. It took a dozen trips before she got the idea to wheel a gurney out and stack everything on it. Everything remaining fit and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. Negotiating the gurney through the sliding glass doors and down the hallway of abandoned beds gave her another idea. After she dropped the gurney off at the nurse’s station, she ran back to the sliding doors and pushed as many beds, stretchers, and pieces of furniture into the hallway as she could. If someone did come that way, she’d have a little warning.

  She also stood clipboards up on them, leaning them against each other, so if someone shoved the beds out of the way, the clipboards would fall. She ran around the hospital and made sure every other door was locked.

  Nightfall scared her.

  She used two hospital beds to block the entrance to their room, wedging them so the door couldn’t be opened. She took Jada into the bathroom and hoped the girl went enough. She put her back into a bed and crawled in with her. Wrapped in a blanket, she couldn’t sleep.

  Afraid to even look out the window, Jayla huddled with her sister in the dark and tried to force all the terrible things she imagined out of her mind.

  “The only thing to fear is fear itself,” her Daddy told her and she whispered the words to herself and to Jada over and over and she tried to remember happier times. She told Jada stories about going to Fourth of July fireworks shows, toasting marshmallows over campfires, and going to a refurbished drive-in movie theater. Any happy memory of doing things at night that she could conjure, she shared.

  She didn’t remember stopping talking or falling asleep, but the sun was high in the sky when she awoke. And Jada had wet the bed.

  After cleaning her sister up and replacing the plastic sheets, she ran around the hospital. The doors remained locked and her clipboards were still in place. There were clear paths now through the rest of the hospital, so once she’d eaten a breakfast of cornflakes, granola bars, and yogurt, she decided to take Jada out for a stroll in her wheelchair.

  At first the stroll was just that, a stroll. It quickly became boring. She walked along and told her sister about every part of the hospital until there was nothing left to tell.

  “Race you to the end,” she said at the head of a long corridor. She ran, pushing the wheelchair ahead of her. At the end of the corridor, she swerved it around the corner, a wheel tipping a little on its side, and she heard a sound that gave her the first real hope she’d had in two days.

  Jada laughed.

 

  Eva Gilliam sat nervously as she watched her new boss, Olivia Marceline, read her report. She watched the woman for telltale signs and decided Marceline had read the report before and read it now just for show. Figuring that out calmed Eva down.

  “Good work, Gilliam,” the Agency department director finally said. “You saved your partner’s life.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Marceline held up the handwritten report and glanced with disgust at the closed laptop on her desk.

  “The computers are useless. I have no idea what your work history is. You are a field agent, correct?”r />
  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where did you serve?”

  “Mostly recruiting fairs, ma’am.”

  “And yet you shot up all these bad guys?”

  “Everything I wrote is true, ma’am. I’ve been well trained.” And I got really lucky, she didn’t add.

  Marceline put the report down and stared at Eva.

  “I believe you. Your friend, Mr. de la Serda, has been questioned and everything he said corroborates your story.”

  Eva didn’t react. Marceline hadn’t believed her report on first reading, but now she did. That was obvious. If Eva’d dropped Juan off, like she’d considered doing, no one would have believed her about the firefight in Las Vegas. Grateful she’d let him stay with her all the way to Palmdale, she wondered what he was up to now.

  “It’s too bad the aliens didn’t drop meteors all over Vegas,” Marceline said, moving on. “A hundred thousand refugees left California to go to Utah and less than half returned. They brought back another hundred thousand Nevadans with them, fleeing from the brutality in the city. Some of the stories I’ve heard make you doubt whether humanity should even be allowed to survive.”

  Eva didn’t respond.

  “But survive we have,” Marceline continued. “We learned quickly that in order to get what we need, things like the hospital where your partner was operated on, we had to provide what others needed. Leadership. We co-opted the local government leaders to help and now I find myself more concerned with food distribution, sanitation, water, and policing than anything else. No one who works for us even knows we’re part of the Agency, though. Keep it that way.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But I have very few agents. And nothing can fly. I lost two top field agents in a helicopter over Ventura a couple of days ago. They stayed up too long. It seems like a bird can be the air only about twenty or thirty minutes before it attracts attention.”

  “I understand, ma’am.”

  “The aliens are everywhere but also nowhere at the same time. We don’t know what they’re up to. I don’t have a specific assignment for you yet, but you’re going to need a new partner. Do you trust this Juan de la Serda?”

  Eva considered the question. The man did what she asked, risked himself to save them both, and he certainly knew how to throw a grenade. He also kept his mouth shut when Eva made him pull over at a rest stop where she went behind the locked buildings and tried to control the shakes she experienced once the adrenaline from the firefight left her. She cried. She dry heaved. She must have looked a mess when she returned to the jeep, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

  “He maintains you’re a killing machine.”

  Eva allowed herself to smile. “It was quite the baptism of fire, ma’am.”

  “He’s your new partner. Bring him back here at three minutes to five. I’ll end my meeting early and I can swear him in. He’ll also need to sign a secrecy agreement. You explain everything to him. I won’t have time for that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then train him up. Quickly. It won’t be long before you get an assignment. You’re dismissed.”

  Eva stood. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Gilliam?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I understand your old partner’s awake.”

  Mark looked terrible. IVs everywhere, the stub of his arm covered in bandages, machines beeping and wheezing. Juan sat in a chair in the corner of the hospital room.

  Eva entered, went around to the right side of the bed, and put her hand gently on Mark’s good shoulder. His eyes fluttered a little, he squinted at her, then closed them again. He reached his right hand up and Eva took it.

  “There’s the little hussy,” he whispered.

  His words shocked Eva. “What?”

  “I can’t believe you cheated on me with that guy.”

  She looked around at Juan, who shrugged innocently.

  “I’m out for five minutes tops, and you pick up some random stranger to be your new partner. I thought we had something more than that.” He couldn’t keep up the joke any longer and started laughing. “That hurts,” he groaned.

  “You’re a moron,” Eva told him, squeezing his hand as she said it.

  “You take care of her,” Mark called out loudly.

  “Yes, sir,” Juan replied from the corner of the room.

  “Wait. You already knew he’s to be my new partner? I just barely found out myself.”

  “I’m a spy,” Mark whispered, his voice sounding pained and a little distant. “It’s my job to gather intelligence.” He tried to chuckle. “Doc’s gotta give me some more drugs. I’ll be out like a light when he does.” He forced his eyes open. “Thanks, Gilliam. You saved my life. I owe you one.”

  Tears came to Eva’s eyes. The image of the boy running from the bus shelter also came unbidden, but she dismissed it. She had save Mark’s life, and together, she and Juan had saved each other. That’s what was important.

  “We’ll be fine. You get better.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She leaned forward towards him, her lips moving to kiss his forehead.

  He mumbled, his eyes still closed, “If you try to slip me some tongue, I’m liable to bite it.”

  She giggled and kissed his cheek instead.

  “I’ll check on you tomorrow, Mark.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  He beeped his nurse. Eva hated seeing him this way, but realized it was better than the alternative. He could have died, trapped under the jeep.

  And for what? So some gang could get their supplies? The gang didn’t even know how well armed she and Mark were. Theirs was just the next vehicle to come down the road. It was senseless.

  “Bye,” she whispered softly, not really wanting to leave but knowing she needed to. Juan stood also. Mark lifted his remaining arm in a half wave. The hand plopped back down by his side as someone came in to give him something for the pain.

  “He’ll be fine, ma’am,” Juan whispered and led the way out. She followed the big baseball player.

  She put her hand on his arm in the hallway.

  “Thanks, Juan.”

  He nodded in reply. “What now, ma’am?”

  “I’m going to get a good night’s sleep and then your training starts tomorrow. After a little business.”

  They left the hospital and headed towards the yellow jeep in the parking lot. The hotel the Agency commandeered and where Juan and Eva were staying wasn’t far, but too far to walk. Juan got into the driver’s seat and Eva sat on the passenger side. The seat still lacked a headrest but Juan had finished breaking out the remnants of the windshield.

  “Could I talk you into stopping for some food first, ma’am? Before we take care of whatever business you have?”

  “We really need to get this fixed,” she said. She put her hand up to the windshield frame. Her thumb rubbed along the rubber. Juan had cleaned it out well.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  She looked at him and smiled to make him feel comfortable.

  “Food’s fine.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He gunned the engine.

  Wolfgang hung upside down from the seatbelt in the army truck. He couldn’t understand why he was there. He’d been through this already, hadn’t he?

  This time he had feeling in his arms and hands and there was something in his right hand. He looked down at it and the thing loomed large in his vision. He recognized it immediately. A World War Two pistol. A German Luger.

  The design of the pistol differed from modern weaponry, but felt good in his hand, the extended barrel sitting comfortably on the back of his hand between his thumb and forefinger, the angle of the grip making it easy to hold with the rest of his fingers an
d fitting snugly in his palm. The gun was always considered a prize by Allied soldiers.

  He heard a noise and looked up. Leah, her face right side up, but appearing upside down to him, put her face in the empty window frame of the truck. She spoke but he heard no sound. Her face grew anxious.

  A boy’s face replaced hers.

  Wolfgang recognized the boy as the lookout the Americans stumbled across on the side of the mountain. The boy yelled at him but he still heard no sound. The Luger came up of its own accord and Wolfgang felt his finger pull the trigger, felt the recoil in the pistol, but still heard no sound.

  A hole appeared in the center of the boy’s forehead and his face was replaced by another. The new face, still with a bullet hole in the forehead, was Leah’s.

  Wolfgang sat up, wide awake, but unsure of his surroundings. His head pounded and he closed his eyes. The images from his dream replayed across his mind. He opened his eyes again.

  “Too soon for you to be up. Lay down,” he heard a sweet but insistent voice say. He obeyed.

  He felt hands on his head and he put his hand up and touched where the hands touched. He felt bandages.

  “Where am I?”

  “Ludiano. My parent’s house. My home,” Leah said.

  He opened his eyes and she still bent over him. Her hair dripped water on him and she wore only a towel, as if she had just stepped out of a shower.

  “Your bandage is fine,” she concluded, standing up straight. “We’ll change it again in a couple of hours.”

  Seeing past her, he saw part of the room they were in. White, ornate crown molding, white trim around a white door, pink walls, and a splay of dried flowers.

  Leah turned away from him and opened a dresser drawer. She rooted through it and found something. She bent over and Wolfgang looked away while she dressed.

  He lay in a bed with a metal frame and four metal posts, also white. A down comforter inside a pink duvet cover rested on him.

  He tried to focus on the room and not the sounds of the woman next to him changing. He knew the sounds well. His wife made those sounds when she pulled underwear on, put her bra on, dried her hair, flipping it forward to cover it in the towel, then twisting the towel up to keep water from dripping on her clothes, then putting on the rest of her clothes.

  Mundane sounds he had grown accustomed to. When they were first married he always watched her dress, enjoying the intimacy of being able to do that. After a few years it became commonplace and he never thought about it.

  He missed her now, the similarity of Leah casually dressing while he lay in her bed making him miss his wife more and making him long for Leah to not be Leah, but to be his wife instead. He knew he must never say such a thing.

  She moved in and out of the bathroom while she finished getting ready, sounds that also were too familiar. Hanging up the towel, brushing her teeth, brushing her hair, only the sound of a blow dryer missing, and putting makeup on. It always grew quieter when a woman put makeup on, and Wolfgang had been trained not to talk during those few minutes.

  The amount of time his wife spent dressing diminished significantly after their daughter was born. He would sometimes go in and soothe the baby to give his wife a few more minutes, but ultimately only she could feed her. He tried to do the best he could. He wanted to do the best he could, but the harried look in his wife’s eyes often made him feel guilty.

  She probably didn’t want him to feel guilty; raising a baby is simply a tremendous burden on a mother. A father can only do so much regardless of his intentions. Though he often felt relief when he got up in the middle of the night to pick his daughter up from her crib and bring her into her mother. His wife would then be up the next hour or so, feeding the baby, burping her, and changing her diaper and sometimes her nightclothes. Wolfgang would quickly fall back to sleep and not be aware of any of it until it came time to bring the sleeping baby carefully back to her crib. And sometimes his wife even did that and Wolfgang wouldn’t wake until morning.

  Thinking of his wife while a woman changed near him was not healthy. He missed her and he thought Leah was his wife for a few moments, a few happy moments followed by crashing realization and depression. His mind became confused and his head throbbed. He needed to sleep and not dream.

  “I have to go help Mama with the dinner. If you need anything, shout,” Leah said after she finished changing. She spoke English, but Wolfgang understood. He wished she would speak German, but he thought of his wife and perhaps speaking English with Leah would be better. It would make her different. And he needed to learn English better anyway.

  “I will,” he replied solemnly.

  “Okay.” She hesitated. “Try to sleep,” she said and left, looking back at him worriedly. She closed the door behind herself.

  Wolfgang stared at the door for a while and felt himself begin to cry. He cried for a while until he fell asleep.

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