Doom Page 2

  He snorted, as he put a T-shirt in the bag, thinking: “battle stress.” Pretty term for how you felt when you blew a fifteen-year-old kid in half, then found you’d let the closest thing you had to a friend get his head shot off because you’d misread the situation…

  And because I agreed to use untested rifles.

  The humidity had made the M-100s lock up—they all knew that could happen with cheap ordnance. And UAC was cutting corners on the weaponry. Give me a good chaingun anytime…

  Sarge had trusted him with that patrol—and it’d gone south; it was his cluster-fuck, no one else’s. And that kid…probably had been a guerilla for about an hour and a half.

  Reaper turned to look at the others, wondering if they thought he was some kind of liability, being ordered to memory therapy.

  But they were just chilling in the barracks here in Twentynine Palms, California. Duke, on his bunk with his feet up on a packed kit bag, wearing only a wifebeater and his cammie pants, was squinting against smoke from the cigarette wedged in his lips as he played Space Invaders on a laptop. That was normal enough for Duke.

  The others were getting ready for leave, too, or already packed. Portman was checking his kit for the third time to see if he’d remembered his condoms. Goat kneeling at his bunk, praying. That’s what he’d been doing for a lot of the last six weeks. Praying.

  Against orders, Goat had piled up a pretty good collection of human scalps, souvenirs from firefights—but he’d thrown those out, first thing, on coming back. He’d changed, after the methane fields. Something about the guerilla kid being from the same ethnicity as Goat—all too much like a cousin.

  Goat had been muttering about God and praying ever since; there was a silver crucifix dangling on his chest.

  The new kid—Kid, they called him, imaginatively enough—wasn’t going on leave. He’d just gotten here: Jumper’s replacement. A gangly nineteen-year-old, the Kid was sweeping the floor with an old-fashioned broom—they made him use the broom, although maintenance had sonic sweepers. He looked lost and miserable.

  Mac was pitching oranges the length of the room to Destroyer, who was “up to bat,” teeth bared.

  Reaper thought about complaining about the mess they were making as Destroyer swung the bat, making the orange into a juicy, disintegrating ground ball spattering down the aisle between the bunks…but Reaper didn’t feel like a hard-ass today. Let Sarge deal with it.

  Behind Destroyer was a cardboard cutout of a naked girl wearing a catcher’s mask. She caught the next orange on her right breast, as Destroyer whiffed one. Juice ran down her exquisitely taut tummy.

  The barracks normally smelled of sweat, leather, and boot-black—but they were getting ready for R&R, so tonight it smelled of aftershave and hair gel.

  “I don’t fucking believe this shit,” Portman said, banging his watch on the end of his metal-frame bunk. He glared at the watch, then at the clock on the wall, comparing. “Six months without a weekend, and the fuckin’ transporter’s five minutes late. That’s five minutes of R&R I’ll never get back.”

  “Relax, baby,” Duke said, not looking up from his game. “You’re on vacation.”

  Portman stuck his hands in his pockets, scowling, came to look over Duke’s shoulders. “Why do you play those fuckin’ stupid old games?”

  Duke shot down another video invader with a practiced snap of his index finger. “You ever play chess, Portman? Some games will never die.”

  Portman walked away, snorting. Duke shook his head sadly at Portman’s ingrained philistinism. “This game was layered, man.”

  Mac tossed an orange up, caught it, tested its weight in the palm of his hand as he looked for a pitch opening. “So where are you going, ’Stroyer?”

  Destroyer did a couple of near-light-speed practice swings with the bat, grinning as he thought about his leave. “Grover Island. Surfin’. I’m telling you man, their weather is crazy. Thirty-foot breakers.”

  Destroyer put his finger meditatively to his mouth, licked orange juice. “How about you, Portman?” he asked. Every so often one of them remembered to try to “include” Portman.

  “I’m goin’ go down to El Honto,” Portman said, a dreamy look coming into his eyes, just as if he was going to talk about sitting on the porch with his dear old granny, “lock myself in a motel with a bottle of tequila and three she-boys.”

  Destroyer made a face at that but said nothing.

  Mac pitched his citrus baseball—Destroyer swung, hit the orange dead on. It angled like a meteor across the barracks and smacked wetly into the wall just above Duke’s head. Fingers dancing over keyboard and mouse, Duke didn’t even flinch.

  Another orange whooshed by, just missing Goat’s left ear. Maybe Mac did that on purpose—being a practical joker, he probably did.

  “Where you going, Kid?” Duke asked, still not looking up.

  The Kid paused in his brooming. Everyone looked at him. He cleared his throat. “Me? Oh…I gotta stay here.”

  Portman made a bogus sound of sympathy. “Oh. Oh that’s tragic. Grunt’s been here, like, ninety seconds. He ain’t never been in rotation.”

  Destroyer reached into his bag of oranges. “Sorry, Kid, you don’t get R&R till you’ve at least been shot at…”

  Head ducked low, Portman shot the Kid a glare. “My heart fuckin’ bleeds for you. Sweep up, you fuckin’ pussy.”

  Duke clucked his tongue in disapproval of Portman’s tone. “Hey, this kid was the best marksman in his entire division. Don’t listen to ’em, Kid. We’re all glad to have you here.” After a moment he added, “Now sweep up, you fuckin’ pussy.”

  Everyone laughed at that, even the Kid. Okay, so not everyone, after all: Reaper hadn’t laughed since the last assignment. Right now, the Kid saw, as he swept his broom into an alcove off the main room, Reaper was sitting at a table, assembling and disassembling a heavy, gunmetal black light machine gun so fast his fingers blurred. The Kid whistled in admiration at Reaper’s skill.

  “How fast, sir?” he asked.

  “Not fast enough,” Reaper said.

  Reaper assembled the weapon again. His fingers, picking up components and snapping them into place, seem to have a life of their own.

  “Looks damn fast to me, sir,” the Kid said.

  Reaper looked at him. “Call me John, Kid. I work for a living, just like you.”

  The Kid smiled. But the uncertainty must’ve been there in his face anyway, because Reaper added, “Give it time, Kid. You’ll get it.”

  “What about you, Reaper?” Destroyer asked, raising his voice so Reaper could hear, in his alcove, tossing an orange from hand to hand. “Where you going?”

  Reaper didn’t answer.

  They all turned to look—they knew about the psych-tech. They’d picked up on his mood, anyway, you couldn’t miss it.

  You felt the burn of his bad mood like a tanning light on sunburn, Destroyer thought.

  “Yeah what’s it gonna be, Reaps?” Duke asked—actually glancing up from the game this time. “An armed conflict someplace quiet.”

  “Little relaxing jungle warfare?” Portman chimed in.

  Duke grinned. “Or you gonna stay here cleanin’ your piece, doing push-ups?”

  Reaper winked at the Kid, picked up his rifle. “Well you know, Duke, I thought maybe I’d drop by your mom’s house, wait in line.”

  The others laughed. Duke didn’t. Reaper just stared him down.

  Reaper didn’t feel like letting them know that for once he was looking forward to R&R. He figured maybe some vacation would get him into another frame of mind. Anything so he could stop thinking about Jumper. That day in the jungle.

  He put the gun aside, and went to pack his duffel.

  But he was wasting his time, packing for R&R. He didn’t know it yet, but he wasn’t going on furlough.

  He was going to Hell.

  In the dimly lit, spartan NCO quarters down the hall, sat the NCO himself, the guy whose men just called him Sarge. He
sat on his bunk, shirtless, staring at a blank wall. Big guy. About as muscular as you can be without being pussy enough to resort to steroids. Head shaved, dark skin reflecting his indeterminate racial mix. But you could see the tattoos—he’s a living canvas for tattoos muraling his massive shoulders, down his arms, across his chest: each one a souvenir of a campaign, or an invasion—an invasion of a whorehouse, in some cases.

  Anybody just walking in might’ve thought he was talking to himself, till they noticed the headset.

  “Go ahead…” He listened. Nodded to himself. “Access level of threat,” he said. “Code black. Containment or quarantine…”

  He was repeating what someone was saying to him, verifying, confirming it to memory.

  “…Extreme prejudice…Search and destroy…Orders received and understood.”

  Sarge stood up and shrugged into a cammie T-shirt, already on his way out the door, down the hall, his big boots ringing on the steps down to the barracks.

  At the bottom of the stairs he took one step out into the barracks, and the laughter in the room ceased. Everyone looked at him with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

  “Ah, shit,” Portman muttered.

  Something in Sarge’s face, his whole manner clued them in to what was coming.

  “Listen up,” Sarge said. A voice like an electric bass on its lowest note. The Marshall amp’s volume knob was on three but it could go up to ten. “Leave is canceled.”

  The men looked at one another. Amazement. Disgust. Wry resignation. No one with the nerve to complain, though it was obvious from Portman’s expression that he’d like to. Finally, looking at those expressions, Duke had to laugh out loud.

  “You got a problem, Duke?” Sarge asked.

  “Me, Sarge? Hell, no. I love my job.” Duke smiled sunnily. Mac grinned.

  Sarge just looked back at him, his dark, deeply etched face almost expressionless.

  It was time to ask the obvious question. They waited. Finally, Destroyer asked it. “Whassup, Sarge?”

  “We got us a game.” He looked at the Kid. “Kid—you’re up.”

  The Kid leaned his broom against a locker. Reaper could tell he didn’t know what to do with himself after that. Just sort of stood there in the middle of the floor.

  “You’re in the RRTS now, boy,” Sarge went on. “And what do we do in the RRTS?”

  Everyone responded to that one at once: “Pray for war!”

  Except for Goat, who only shook his head. He’d been praying along different lines.

  Reaper was thinking maybe it was better this way. In some part of his mind he’d been afraid he might be a loose cannon in the civilian community. The way he’d been feeling, it might be dangerous if he got drunk.

  He didn’t want to spend any time in prison. Not even a civilian one.

  “Fall in,” Sarge told them, his eyes on Reaper as he spoke.

  Portman growled deep in his throat but fell in with the others to file out of the room, heading upstairs.

  “Great vacation,” Duke muttered to Destroyer, as they went. “They go so quick, don’t they?”

  “Almost like we’ve never been away.”

  Reaper started to go with them—but Sarge stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Not this time, Reaper.”

  “What?” Reaper was genuinely surprised.

  “Take the furlough. We can handle this one.”

  “We got a game, Sarge.” The term in this unit’s argot meant it was going to be tough—balls-out, hard-core tough. Yeah: maybe that was just what he needed. Something so demanding there’d be no time to think. That was another problem with R&R: you had too much time to think. “We got a game, I’m ready.”

  And Reaper started obstinately for the stairs.

  “It’s Olduvai,” Sarge said, simply.

  Reaper stopped in his tracks. A shiver went through him. A feeling like superstitious dread. “Olduvai?”

  “Just take the leave.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s a recommendation.”

  Reaper had been stopped for a moment by the thought of Olduvai. The personal ramifications of it. But those connections were exactly why he had to go…

  Still. It’d be hard to be objective.

  Sarge looked at him—then turned and climbed the stairs, leaving him alone to think.

  But thinking was something Reaper was trying to avoid, lately.

  RRTS Six, without Reaper, was crossing the tarmac in the predawn grayness. They were headed to the big, armored transport chopper, already warming up, its rotors lazily turning. It showed their squadron’s insignia: a gun and knife crossed, twined by a fanged serpent.

  They clambered into the large troop bay of the chopper, went immediately to their spots along the face-to-face wall-mounted jump seats.

  Each one grabbed a weapon from the overhead rack—the one they specialized in, or, in the case of the Kid, the ones they were cleared for.

  Destroyer grabbed an enormous chaingun—an ordinary man would have trouble even lifting it, let alone shooting the thing. Almost tubular in overall shape, with its primary handle up top, designed to be wedged against the hip while fired, it was fed with long, long chains of 10mm armor-piercing bullets.

  “Any idea where we’re going?” the Kid asked, getting his own ordnance down from the rack.

  “Yeah,” Destroyer said, slinging an extra ammo chain over his shoulder. “Wherever they send us.”

  The weapon itself spoke up, then—its computerized identity lock system said, in a monotone:

  “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Destroyer.”

  Goat stood a moment, looking at the small worn Bible in his hand—then he put it in his coat pocket, so he could have both hands free to heft the double-barreled, multiround shotgun…

  “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Goat.”

  Portman grabbed the plasma rifle. It was made of light, artificially hardened maxiplastics, its design bulky, jutting with attachments. When properly charged it had the power to fire ionized plasma capable of breaking down the bonds of the target’s molecules. Though it looked as primitive as a triceratops, it was sophisticated, if anything this murderous could be called sophisticated. Portman chuckled, hefting the plasma rifle. It made him feel like his balls had just doubled in size.

  And the weapon spoke up: “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Portman.”

  The Kid started for a chaingun, but Destroyer shook his head at him. He hadn’t been cleared for the weapon yet. The Kid sighed and took the two handheld semiautomatics.

  And the automatics, speaking in chorus, confirmed it: “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: The Kid.”

  The Kid winced. “‘The Kid’?”

  The Kid was looking forward to getting a new nickname. Once he’d said as much to Duke, hinting that maybe he could earn a handle a little ballsier than the Kid. Duke had said, “Your handle’s too small for you to get a bigger handle.”

  “He couldn’t handle it,” Portman had chimed in, thinking he was pretty cute.

  “If he handles it, it better be in private. I don’t want to see that in the barracks.”

  The Kid had kept his mouth shut about it after that.

  Katshuhiko “Mac” Takaashi took the massive Combo ATS Grenade Launcher and Elephant Gun off the rack. He made a low growling Mmmm sound as he hefted it, like a man who’s just bitten into a perfect cut of steak. This was so much better than the M-100.

  “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified, Handle ID: Mac.”

  Gregory “Duke” McGreevy lit a cigarette with one hand, grabbed his automag with the other: light, similar to a Mack 10, but chockablock with lethal rounds, it had decent long-range accuracy.

  He twirled the automag, as its ID chip said, almost companionably: “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Duke.”

  “Oh yeah,” Duke said. “Say my name, baby.”

  A huge hand reached
into the overhead rack, in one scoop—in that one hand—taking both a sniper rifle and a big 65mm pistol. He took the rifle in one hand—

  “RRTS Special ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Sarge.”

  —and stuck the pistol in his holster. “All set?” Sarge asked.

  He turned to shout the liftoff order to the chopper pilot up forward…

  “Hold it!” came a deep voice from the tarmac—someone just outside the chopper passenger hatch.

  They all turned as one to see John “Reaper” Grimm entering, dressed for combat, complete with helmet.

  “You sure about this?” Sarge asked, his voice soft, as discreet as he could manage in the circs.

  For answer, Reaper selected his handheld machine gun: lighter than the chaingun but lethal close in, good accuracy for longer ranges—six hundred rounds max, sixty-round clips. Reliable—no matter the humidity.

  “RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Reaper.”

  Reaper turned and met Sarge’s eyes. Gave out a tiny smile.

  Sarge nodded. “Take us up!”

  Three

  THE CHOPPER LIFTED off, carrying the squadron to the Ark Facility in Papoose Lake, Nevada.

  Strapped into his harness, Reaper noticed the Kid watching him and Destroyer; modeling himself on them, Reaper figured.

  Jumper had sort of looked up to Reaper, too…Where had it gotten him?

  Portman noticed the Kid watching Reaper. He grinned. “You know, Kid, it’s funny. Couple days ago I tell Sarge I could use a little pussy. Next day, he brings you onto the team.”

  Annoyed at Portman’s constant ragging on the Kid, Reaper said, “Don’t give me an excuse, Portman. No one here will miss you.”

  But the Kid was distracted by Goat—who was pulling a knife.

  Goat’s shirt was open, his scarred chest exposed. He ran a thumb along the edge of the combat knife, locking eyes with the Kid—then turned the blade against himself, digging the point into the skin. He looked down at himself, concentrating on his handiwork as he carved a cross into his skin—amongst all the other crosses scarring his chest. The chopper gave a sudden shudder, making Goat’s hand jog, so the bottom of the cross came out a bit crooked. He had to start another one, to get it right. Then the chopper lurched again…Goat frowned. And started another cross.