We thundered in from the cold to the quartermaster shed like we were taking Omaha Beach . It was a barn of a room split lengthwise by a waist-high counter. Behind it loitered vacant-eyed men in olive fatigues and behind them shelves sagged beneath clothing and equipment just as drab.
We lined up and one by one got piled chin-high with clothes that smelled like Grandma’s closet.
I said to the gung ho black guy from the airport, “This stuff’s used!”
“Not since the war.”
“Second Afghan?”
“Second World.”
I laughed.
“Seriously.” He plopped his gear on a wooden table and jerked a thumb at rough, whitewashed board walls. “The army’s overcrowded. Last time they opened In-diantown Gap was Vietnam.”
A bored clerk behind the counter tore plastic from another packet of field jackets. Mothballs trickled onto the counter.
I stuck out my hand to the black guy. “Jason Wander.”
“Druwan Parker.” His hand swallowed mine.
“How come you know so much, Parker?”
“I always figured to enlist My uncle’s a general. Adjutant General’s Corps.”
This smart guy picked Infantry! So I had made a good choice.
“He says I gotta do time in hell before he’ll swing me a branch transfer to AG Corps. So I’m starting in Infantry.”
My heart sank, then rose. “Branch transfer?”
He shook his head. “Unless you got connections, it don’t happen in wartime. Most everybody here’s Infantry ‘til they die.”
“Maybe the Space Force is at war. The war’s out by the moon.”
“That’s not the point. The economy’s tanked. Unemployment’s the highest in a century. The army is America’s soup kitchen. They’re demothballing posts like this and dragging out old equipment to train us all.”
“Train us for what?”
He shrugged. “Clean up craters that used to be cities. Evacuate new targets. Shoot rioters when food runs out. Don’t you watch the news?”
Why, when I could get the Cliff Notes version from Parker? He was a nice guy and smart to boot.
A garage-size door at the building’s end rumbled, rolled aside, and let winter in. Snow shot at us, horizontal on the wind. A canvas-topped truck backed up and plugged the opening. Framed in the truck’s cargo bay stood a guy in white fatigues, hands on hips. Fumes belched into the I building. The military was still allowed to use diesels.
I never believed that back before the turn of the century internal-combustion-engine cars rumbled over the roads like stampeding buffalo and turned the air brown. Until now.
I coughed. “That’s bad!”
“No, that’s good!” Parker stood and tugged me toward the track. “That’s the mess truck.”
Parker’s quick action put us fourth of fifty in the chow line. This was a relationship to cultivate.
The white-suited cook tossed us each a cardboard box maybe eight-by-five inches and we walked back to our table.
Parker muttered, “Botulism in a box!”
“Huh?”
He tore open his box and undersized green cans and brown foil packets spilled onto the table. “C-rations. One can’s a main course, then there’s dessert and stuff. These have been in some warehouse since Vietnam! The army never throws nothin‘ away.”
He shrugged and read one of his cans. “Some of the main courses are edible. Like this one. beef with gravy.”
I tilted my box toward me, peeked in, and read a can top, stenciled ham and lima beans.
“But,” he said, “there’s one, ‘ham and lima beans.’ Recycled barf.”
“Trade boxes, Druwan?”
Fifteen minutes later I stood in line burping up lima beans, realizing that Parker was even smarter than I thought, and pushing my civilian bag forward with my foot. At the head of the line Drill Sergeant Ord sat at a table while each of us emptied out all our crap for his inspection.
Ord didn’t look up as I scooped my stuff onto the table.
“Warm now, Wander?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”
He tossed my Chipman into a big, green poly envelope labeled with my name. “You’ll get it back after Basic.”
“How’m I supposed to mail people?”
He snapped his head up.
I added, “Drill Sergeant.”
He nodded.
I figured it out. You just had to use their little suck-up words.
“You know the satellites aren’t receiving, trainee. And there are no land repeaters in these hills. Your little personal assistant is good for nothing here but stored porno and hologames. You’ll be too busy for either.”
He reached into a box and pulled out a dull green Chipboard. “This is yours to keep.”
“Some trade! Army-surplus junk that nobody’s mailed with since before the Broncos won the Worldbowl.”
“The army encourages you to write home, trainee.”
A lump swelled in my throat. The bastard probably knew I had no home to write to.
He dug through my shaving kit, tugged out the shaving-cream squirt can, and chucked it into the envelope. “You will shave daily but with this cream.” He tucked an old-fashioned, capped squeeze tube in my kit.
I was an orphan. War had taken my mother. War had taken my home. This war-loving bully had nothing better to do than take my shaving cream?
Annoyance rose in me and spilled. I raised my voice to be heard over all the sniffling and milling and whispering behind me. “Begging the drill sergeant’s pardon, why is he harassing us about this crap instead of teaching us things that might save our lives?”
The place went morgue-still. Somebody whispered, “Oh, fuck.”
Ord stared at me, then his eyebrows twitched one millimeter. “A fair question. And you asked with appropriate military courtesy, Trainee Wander.”
He stood, hands on hips, and addressed the assembled multitude. “Many of the weapons-control, vehicle, and other systems on which you will train were designed before the advent of reliable voice-recognition technology. Chipboard practice will allow you to refine or develop keyboard and handwriting skills today’s generation lacks. That may save your lives and those of your fellow soldiers.”
He held up my shaving-cream can. “Your unit may on a moment’s notice be transported anywhere in the world aboard aircraft which are, or may unexpectedly become, depressurized. Pressurized aerosols become bombs that at a minimum can ruin your gear and at a maximum could bring down an aircraft. You will be clean-shaven at all times because your gas mask will not seal against a beard. Additional questions?”
I smiled to myself. “Military courtesy” meant you could be a smart-ass and not get in trouble.
“Trainee Wander, your question indicates you believe you know better than the command structure what is best for your unit?”
Uh-oh. “No, Drill Sergeant.”
“Are you cold?”
Was there a right answer?
“It’s a bit chilly, Drill Sergeant.”
Ord nearly smiled as he nodded. “Then let’s all warm up. Platoon! Drop and give me fifty push-ups.”
Anonymous groans as fifty bellies hit the deck. I supposed that if I’d said I wasn’t cold Ord would have said how nice, the temperature was perfect for exercise. We’d be doing push-ups either way. Could Ord be a bigger dick?
“No, Wander, not you. You have earned your opportunity to lead the group. You will stand and count cadence.”
Yes, he could. I stood. “One!”
Someone hissed, “Asshole.” He wasn’t talking about Ord.
When they finished all I wanted was to crawl in some hole as far away from Drill Sergeant Ord as possible. No such luck. He held up my pill bottle and raised his eyebrows.
“Just Prozac II, Drill Sergeant.”
It went in the green envelope. What the hell? I mean, I’m no ‘Zac hack. I’d drop a couple if the Broncos lost or something, but who didn’t? It had been over-the-counter for years. They did say Prozac II was hugely stronger than the old stuff. Maybe since Mom died I did too much of it. Who wouldn’t?
Ord stood again. The platoon would lynch me for this.
“Gentlemen, there is one thing that will get you out of this army or into the stockade in a New York minute! That thing is drug abuse. Impaired performance may kill your buddies. If you are wounded in combat, the medic lacks the time, training, and material to match lifesaving drugs to those already in your system. In that case drug abuse may kill you . Nonprescription mood lighteners are regarded as severely as cocaine and the like. If you have any now, it will be packed away, no questions asked. If you have any later, you will be packed away. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” Fifty voices together.
After an hourlong orientation lecture we stumbled into Third Platoon’s barracks, just a long, whitewashed room lit by double-hung windows. A regular combat-infantry company was four platoons, fifty soldiers each. A training company was the same, except each platoon had no regular officers, just a drill sergeant who lived in an office at the end of the platoon’s barracks and rode everybody’s ass. Third Platoon’s drill was supposed to be a guy named Brock. Parker said he heard Brock was soft for a drill, a good deal for us. Parker probably thought a cold was a good deal because it created jobs for germs.
Upper-lower metal bunks piled with rolled-up mattresses lined the room in two rows flanking a center aisle. Each bunk pair shared a metal wall locker backed against frame walls that were just whitewashed siding, an inch of wood between us and the Pennsylvania winter.
Druwan Parker tossed his stuff on an upper bunk.
I chucked mine below. “Unless you want the lower?”
He shook his head. “Never had an upper.” He grinned. “It’s not a job. It’s an adventure.” His breath swirled as white as cotton against his cheeks.
I shucked my field jacket, then shivered. They couldn’t turn up the heat in here soon enough. The jacket was lead-heavy but as warm and windproof as Ord had said. The bad thing about Drill Sergeant Ord was he was always right. The good thing was that he was senior drill sergeant for a company of four platoons, so we wouldn’t see much of him anymore.
“Gentlemen!”
Ord’s voice froze all sound and movement.
His boots tapped down the center aisle. “Carry on. You have not been called to attention.”
Unpacking resumed.
Ord said, “I am saddened to announce that Drill Sergeant Brock has been transferred. He is as fine a noncommissioned officer as you will find in this army. It would have been your great privilege to be trained by him. However, I am pleased to announce that I will assume his responsibilities for this training cycle in addition to mine as senior drill sergeant. Therefore, I will bunk in the NCO’s office at the end of mis barracks. I will have the pleasure of getting to know each of you in Third Platoon, twenty-four hours each day.”
Lucky us.
“Your questions?”
Someone, not me thank God, spoke. “Where’s the thermostat, Drill Sergeant?”
Ord stood at the end of the aisle and clasped hands behind his back. “Heat for these barracks is generated by coal-fired boilers. As you know, coal-fuel burning and mining was discontinued in this country before some of you were born. Supplies are being imported from Russia. We expect them momentarily.”
Momentarily turned out to mean sometime after 10:00 p.m. lights-out.
Before bed, Parker had shown me how to shine my boots and arrange my locker and stretch the sheets over my mattress. The one thing I’d done right all day was choosing a bunkie who knew the ropes. Meanwhile, some people even found time to write letters home on their Chipboards, like Ord suggested. There was an old machine at the end of the barracks where you plugged in your Chipboard and actually printed a paper letter and put it in an envelope to be carried by mail. Ord thought up some bullshit about how we should soften up our new boots, as if he hadn’t invented enough chores already. Walking around tomorrow would be soon enough to break them in.
We all bunked under coarse blankets, in field jackets, long Johns, and three pairs of wool socks, towels around our necks like scarves.
In my pocket burned two forgotten Prozac II tabs. I was terrified either to take them or to get caught flushing mem. I hadn’t had a ‘Zac in a day.
I stared at the mattress above me, sagging under Parker’s weight while fifty strangers snored, scratched, and farted.
It was the first time since Mom died that I’d really thought about her without the warm fuzz of drugs. She was gone. Not for the weekend or to the movies. Forever. In a roomful of people I was completely alone for the first time in my life. I sobbed until the bunk frame shook.
Finally, I closed my eyes.
“Zero four hundred hours! Fall out, gentlemen!”
It couldn’t be 4:00 a.m. I’d just closed my eyes. Overhead lights seared my eye sockets. Metallic thunder rattled the barracks. Ord stood in the center aisle, stirring a stick around the walls of a galvanized trash can. His uniform was perfect, his face glowing. Feet and bodies thumped floor tile. I sat up.
“Hunnh!” Above me, Parker woke in his new upper bunk. The mattress bulged as he rolled off the bunk edge, didn’t find the floor, and crashed. He screamed and clutched his leg. I looked, then looked away and gagged. Under his long Johns, Druwan’s lower leg bent at the knee where no knee was supposed to be.
Parker was our first training casualty. If he had been our last, human history would have been different.