see?” he said with a smile. “Look at her. She does not cry.” He nodded slowly. “She is the bravest of their soldiers I have yet encountered. Unlike the others, I feel certain we will learn what we need to know from her. We have tried every other variation possible, so watch carefully, my children. Watch carefully, and remember everything.”
Back at the curve in the cavern, Nichols turned the corner. She found herself standing in the entrance of a larger, circular cavern. There were no strung lights here. The only illumination came from the lights beside and behind her.
She peered closer. The walls of the space did not seem to be made of rock. They seemed to be made of mossy clay. The clay was tan, like potter’s clay, seemingly squeezed on top of the rock beneath it. The moss was white and gauzy, and Nichols immediately noticed it riffled in a wind she did not feel. But that meant that there was an exit somewhere. She could follow the air until escape.
Then something else moved. Her senses knew before she did that it was not human. Every pore on her body went concave. Then whatever moisture was left in her slopped out. Terror widened and sharpened her eyes.
Something was crawling over the lip of a clay-plastered hole. Something as big as a brown bear. Only it wasn’t anything as familiar as that.
She saw the legs. She saw the mandibles. She saw the six shining, dead eyes. She saw the bulbous quivering abdomen shuddering like a castanet. She saw the fangs.
Theresa Jane Nichols didn’t know she screamed. She didn’t realize that she screamed so loudly and piercingly that Usa Awar and his cabal winced and cringed many caverns away.
Then it was on her.
Chapter 3
“You should’ve seen him!” Morton Daniels laughed. “He was just standing there in the middle of the worst shit-storm ever, looking around like it’s a day at the beach. And then he starts walking like he’s in candy-land or something. Just walking over a bluff like he hasn’t got a care in the world—while I’m screaming at him to get the fuck down….”
“Ssh,” said a nurse, who, because she wasn’t young, pretty, and slim, Daniels ignored.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Daniels continued, his eyebrows practically crawling into his hairline. “I’m fighting like a sonuvabitch for what seems like hours only to find him, like, a klick away, staring at nothing, his weapon empty and smoking. Then the next thing you know, he drops into my arms like a fainting debutante.” Daniels took a second to grin at Key, who lay, expressionless, in an infirmary bed. “You did, you know,” he added pointedly. “You did.”
“I told you he was suffering post-concussion trauma and post-detonation deafness,” interrupted another, calmer, more professional, voice. Key turned his impassive face to Doctor Stanley Weicholz, who sat on the other side of the bed, away from the leering faces of Daniels’ audience, who were other patients at the Camp Lemonnier Hospital.
“Hey, doc, don’t be a killjoy.” Daniels grinned, hooking a thumb at his listeners. “They seem to be enjoying the story.”
“Yeah,” said the doctor calmly as he continued to take Key’s pulse. “They can. They’re not from what’s left of your squad.”
Daniels’s face changed, as if his brain had been yanked out his mouth. He took a second to recover, then patted Key on his other arm. “Yeah, that’s right. You take it easy, Joe. Rest and recover, okay? I’ll be right outside if you want me.”
“Yeah, no wux, as some Aussies say,” Key replied, using an old in-joke between the two of them. Even so, his voice was more noncommittal than conciliatory. He waited until Daniels was out the door, and Daniels’s audience returned to their own beds and concerns, before turning to Weicholz. “He’s just trying to process it, doc. Cut him some slack, would you?”
“Well, there’s processing to get better, and then there’s processing to get back to where you started,” Weicholz commented while filling out Key’s chart.
“Hey, it’s a miracle he’s still alive,” Key said. “The blowback from his grenade launcher alone should have perforated him.”
Weicholz stood and looked down at his patient with caring concern. “It’s a miracle you’re both still alive. Honestly, Joe, I don’t know why you put up with his, shall I say, somewhat Neanderthal approach to life.”
Key nodded knowingly. “Because, as you now know, doc, I wouldn’t be here without him. Right?”
Weicholz couldn’t argue the point, marveling again at Key’s equilibrium, especially after what he had recently been through. He could only attribute it to the calming influence of the post-concussion and detonation response.
“Right,” he finally agreed, taking a second to reconsider his reaction. “Okay, I could’ve done without his crude fairy tale, but his parting advice was solid. Rest and recover, Corporal. That’s an order.”
Key gave the doctor a mild salute. “Yes, sir,” he said, then returned to his recuperation stupor. It was so thick that the doc was almost out the door before Key thought to call out. “Hey, any word on when I can get back to the unit?” But Weicholz was already gone.
Key stared vacantly out the ward’s window, trying not to think of anything: not his brush with death, not what now seemed to be “his” unit, and especially not what happened to everyone else in the 3rd. But, try as he might, he couldn’t help wondering what he was doing in the Seth Michaud Emergency Medical and Dental Facility at Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the horn of Africa.
Sure, it was directly due west, across the Bab al-Mandab Strait, from Shabhut, Aden, in Yemen, but there had to be at least two aircraft carriers in or near the Strait that were closer, and even better equipped to deal with wounds both physical and psychological. Coming to Lemmonier couldn’t have been Daniels’s decision. Nothing Morty liked better than hitching a ride on a carrier.
“Corporal Josiah Key?”
He turned his head and instantly guessed that the speaker had something to do with it. Standing in the hospital room doorway was a blonde woman whose blue eyes could be appreciated even from this distance. So could the rest of her, which was amply evidenced by Morty Daniels, who was standing right behind her, much in the way, Key imagined, that the wolf stood behind Little Red Riding Hood.
“Yes,” Key replied to her unnecessary question. He had little doubt that the file she was carrying had everything there was to know about him, probably going back to kindergarten.
She nodded, with a small smile of accomplishment, then started walking toward his bed. None of the new gender-neutral uniforms for her. Her service uniform of cap, coat, skirt, and even the one-inch black pumps looked tailored to her with a laser measuring device. But the thing that stood out to Key was the gold second lieutenant bar insignia on her garrison cap and shirt collars. That meant she outranked him, even if the field promotion Daniels had cracked wise about was true.
Only then did Key note the wave of eyes that followed the Second Louie across the room like dandelion seeds following the breeze. They were mirrored by Daniels, who trailed her like a devoted hound, only his eyes were transmitting different information: five-seven, a hundred and twenty pounds; thirty-six, twenty-five, thirty-six…
“Good morning, Corporal,” she said, putting out her hand. “I’m Second Lieutenant Barbara Strenkofski. I’ll be supervising your debriefing.”
