Iron Mike (31 page)

Now, if only the Feeders were enough like snakes ...

“Kari,” Mike said, his voice tight with excitement as he felt himself sucked down another several inches into the Feeder. “Run, as fast as you can. Bring the Maker’s Mark, and for god’s sake, don’t drop it. Go! Go! Go!”

She was off like a shot, coming back in less than a minute with the bottle firmly in her grip. “I’m sorry,” she panted, as she pulled up. “I should have thought of it earlier - I know this has to hurt like a bitch!”

Mike grinned at her, an expression of hope in his eyes. He tried to tamp it down. If this didn’t work, it would be doubly devastating to them both ... but something in his gut told him he might just be the luckiest fucking man on the planet.

“Okay, you need to be very careful,” he said, watching her open the bottle. “I want you to pour a splash onto the Feeder, from the edge of its camouflage to where I am. But don’t waste too much, because we may only get a few shots at this.” He grinned, and then played an imaginary rim shot at his own words with a cocky, “Ba-dum-bah!”

Kari looked at him uncertainly, crushing disappointment filling her chest as she prepared for what would certainly be another act of futility. Mike clearly had a brainstorm, but he would also need the alcohol to help with the pain when it got worse ... and it would get worse. She held her thumb over half of the lip of the bottle as she splashed it onto the Feeder.

Mike screamed in anguish as the Feeder went absolutely insane with movement. Kari screamed in reaction, Hershey barked and growled and snapped, and Butterball yipped ferociously.

When the chaos settled, Mike was buried up to his chest in the Feeder.

He was also less than a foot from solid ground instead of directly in the middle of the beast.

“Again!” Mike snapped. “Over here - do it fast before it can recover!”

Kari obeyed, and this time Mike was ready for the wild thrashing. Hershey lunged forward, and Mike grabbed the dog’s fur, using him to pull against while he edged himself to the very rim of the Feeder and then, like being on the edge of a swimming pool, he hoisted himself up and out. Just like that, he was free.

Hershey wasn’t satisfied. He growled, yanking Mike by the shoulder of his fatigue jacket and pulling ferociously, dirt coming up as the dog’s paws entrenched themselves. Mike forced himself to his knees, crawling after Hershey with sudden tears of pain, terror, relief and overwhelming joy streaming down his face. He was out!

When they were a good ten feet away from the Feeder, Hershey let go and they both dropped down onto the grass, panting. A few moments later, Mike heard Kari behind him and the sudden snarl of heat as she started up the flame thrower with a whoosh. Screaming every obscenity she knew, Kari exterminated the Feeder with extreme prejudice.

Several minutes later, covered with dirt, sweat and soot, Kari dropped down next to Mike and the trembling dogs, breathing rapidly. “Too close, too fucking close, too close!” she sobbed, the words almost hysterical.

“Kari, I -”

“Shut up!” Kari snapped. She threw herself into Mike’s arms, wrapping her fingers in his hair and kissing him passionately. As quickly as she started the kiss, she ended it, pulling away from Mike and stamping back into the rest area to get the first-aid kit.

Mike watched her leave, appreciating the view with new-found clarity, and slowly let his shaking subside. Yes, the girl had a point. It had been too fucking close.

He smiled wryly when he saw her come back with the first-aid kit. “No awesome magic floaty ball to spit healing goop on me this time, huh?” he asked, glancing around hopefully. Kari laughed, shaking her head in exasperation.

“Sorry,” she smiled. “I think we gotta try to patch you up the old fashioned way. We have a lot of booze left to kill your pain, if you want a swig.” She handed him his canteen and some Ibuprofen, looking ruefully at his acid-burned boots, the hole-filled fatigues and the angry red blisters showing beneath the holes. She used a pair of medical scissors to cut the pants, making long, slightly uneven shorts of the fatigues, and then applied burn ointment to the worst of the red blisters on his legs.

“No, we’re not touching the whiskey,” Mike said firmly. “When we get back to Knox, we can requisition our allotment of whatever’s available and get totally shit-faced, but that whiskey is definitely a weapon, not a good time. We’ve got to pass this information up and down the line of the Resistance, Kari. It’s important everyone knows this.”

Suddenly, he smiled, a note of pride and awe in his voice. “You know what this means, right? We finally have a real chance to go on the offensive and really take it to these assholes, as long as the Razers continue to be their last-choice weapon. We’ve found the Trois’ weakness, and now the Feeders,’ too! We have just leveled the goddamned playing field!”

“It means you didn’t die,” Kari countered, a catch in her voice. “It means I didn’t lose you.”

Mike pulled her close to him, hugging her for a long moment. When she smiled and pulled away, he took out the handheld and called in his reports, grinning broadly as the “Repeat, soldier!” and “Goddamn, boy!” comments came back from the USRF units he managed to reach. They would be passing the news on, and in a matter of hours, soldiers would be carrying a new ... well, not so new ... weapon in their arsenals.

He grinned at the thought of Ricochet and Fields. He could just imagine their faces when the Old Bear marched into their tent and commandeered their moonshine still for the war effort! Hell, booze was suddenly even more important in the Army than it had always been ... and that was one of those impossible contradiction things. An oxymoron. Yep. They had themselves an oxymoron! Mrs. Persky would be proud.

The rabbit, unfortunately, was incinerated beyond redemption. Kari gave them each a granola bar, and they were on the road by 0930. Mike’s legs were covered with burn salve and bandages on the worst of the wounds, leaving the less severe injuries to the open air. He looked ridiculous, but he simply didn’t care. They were on the road again, getting closer to home with every mile ... and he was alive!

Hershey

His humans were both extremely grateful to him, and even though Hershey knew he deserved their praise for saving Mike from the monster, he wasn’t quite sure how to react to it. He could feel a change in the way they looked at him now, watching him carefully as though they were actually trying to learn Dog and giving him extra pats and rubs every time they passed him. Kari came to him when Mike went inside the building to water the scented porcelain bowls, and she cried and held him around his neck and whispered, “You are such a good dog, Hershey, thank you, thank you, good boy, good dog,” over and over again until it was almost embarrassing. Sure, he was a good dog. Of
course,
he was a good dog - he was supposed to be! Still ... he had to admit he could get used to Kari’s outpouring of love. It was good to be a good dog!

Yippyface had done well too, Hershey reflected generously, sniffing the puppy and yawning at her with approval. She had growled a very ferocious puppy growl, and she had yipped sternly enough a few times that it almost sounded like a bark or two. Most importantly, though, she kept out of the way.

Hershey jumped into the sidecar and scratched the seat for a moment, looking for a comfortable position. It was definitely roomier now, since Mike and Kari rearranged everything again, and Hershey approved of the extra space. He hated to admit it, but sidecar was losing just a little bit of its thrill since the first few days. It was still absolutely one of Hershey’s favorite things ever, but he almost wished Mike and Kari would find wherever it was they were going ... their version of work, he was sure. Hershey loved the idea of sitting under Kari’s desk while she tapped her fingers on top and talked to other humans and gave them dogs. He didn’t know what kind of work Mike could do, though, if Kari and Hershey worked with the dogs. Maybe Mike could bring Kari’s food to her, and he could tap his fingers on her desk when she went on potty breaks? Kari took a lot of potty breaks.

That issue resolved, Hershey turned around in the side car, and then turned twice more. It got easier each day, every time Mike and Kari re-packed in the mornings. He settled down with a heavy, contented sigh. The sun was up now, but it still wasn’t even close to noon. Hershey figured he could get in a good long nap before Kari or Yippyface would have to go piddle. He closed his eyes and did just that.

They made it through the snarls of Charleston and about ten miles past the city before stopping for lunch, pulling their bikes off to the side of the interstate in the shade of a several-vehicle pileup. Mike pulled out his small boom stick toy and checked the vehicles while Kari waited with her own sidearm out, looking everywhere. Hershey watched with paternal pride as Butterball managed to pull herself up to the seat of the side car and topple over onto the ground. He was pleased to notice the little pup sniff a few blades of grass before squatting to pee.

“Hershey! Come, boy,” Mike called after picking up the long foul-smelling tube and backpack. Hershey came up to his human happily, and Mike finished putting the reeking toy on, and then made a vague gesture out toward the trees. Hershey cocked an ear. “Go on, boy, check it out,” Mike instructed. Hershey sneezed. Mike sighed, and then took a few tentative steps toward the woods. Hershey walked along happily beside him. Mike kept stopping every few seconds, looking over at Hershey. Hershey sat down and had a long, satisfying scratch while he tried to figure out what Mike wanted. He finally did figure it out and loped off quickly, first to the east, then back around to the west. Nothing. He came back to Mike and arched up, his paws on Mike’s chest, as if asking for a good-boy scratch. Mike obliged, but he still seemed distracted, not pleased with Hershey’s all-clear.

With a sigh, Hershey loped back to the woods and followed the tree line east, going much further this time. He was almost out of view of his humans before he finally found one. He hoped it would please Mike. He wanted to please his human. He let out a series of loud, vicious warning barks. Both Mike and, behind him, Kari came running to him as quickly as they could. They stopped a few feet from Hershey, looking around at the ground.

“Do you see it?” Kari asked. She held her camera toy in her hands, and was taking a few pictures of the ground around them.

“Not yet,” Mike said, scanning the area carefully. He looked down at the grinning hound dog. “Where is it boy?” he asked. “Show me the motherfucker.”

Hershey wagged his tail. He knew the word “motherfucker,” although it was normally Kari’s word.

At Mike’s expectant, wary posture, Hershey moved a few steps closer to the Badness. Mike was a step behind him, and Kari followed several steps behind them both.

Slowly, cautiously, Hershey took Mike toward the Badness, stopping about ten feet away with a low, threatening growl. Mike and Kari stood there for several seconds, staring at the ground.

“There!” Kari finally said, her voice excited. “You see it, Mike? That tuft of grass moved; it shifted toward us.”

Mike watched for several more seconds, and tensed when he finally saw through the camouflage. “Got it! Good dog, Hershey! Everyone back up.”

Mike killed the Badness with the same horrible toy Kari had used that morning. Hershey really hoped the flame thrower wasn’t going to become a favorite human toy. It was unbearably loud and hot, and it stunk! God, it smelled worse than anything Hershey had ever smelled, even dead human! He was glad his humans didn’t call him back when he and Butterball ran away from the scary burning toy. Well, he ran. Butterball waddled quickly.

Kasoniak

At 0855, Dick Kasoniak stepped onto the gallows which were erected where the commissary used to be. Two military police officers pulled the sobbing, struggling prisoner to his feet, released the handcuffs that held him to the dais of the gallows, and brought him forcibly toward the colonel.

“You can’t do this!” Rusty Tillison shrieked, his voice carrying easily across the courtyard. Close to a hundred people - a bit more than ten percent of NFK’s population - elected to attend the execution, and the crowd remained respectfully, or otherwise, silent. “This is against my rights! You can’t do this!”

The MPs stood the man in front of Kasoniak. He was slovenly and unshaven, even though he had been given the opportunity to die with dignity. He had declined to bathe or change his clothing, and after two days in the warm spring sunshine, he fairly reeked. He fell silent when Col. Kasoniak looked at him, as if suddenly aware of how he must appear compared to the impeccably dressed soldier standing straight and tall before him.

When Kasoniak spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle. “You have two minutes to say your last words, Mr. Tillison. Do you want a hood? It might make it easier, son - but I wouldn't know.”

“No!” Tillison shrieked. “Fuck you, and your hood!”

At a nod from Kasoniak, the two MPs moved Tillison into position, and a third officer placed the noose around Tillison’s neck, adjusting it snugly. The new chaplain, who wasn’t trained in seminary but took a few comparative religion courses in college, came forward with a Bible in her hand. The young woman had privately admitted to Col. Kasoniak that she was relieved Tillison declined religious counseling. However, she quietly performed the benediction and ceremony of Last Rites that came from her own religious tradition.

“You’re all gonna burn in hell for this!” Tillison screamed. “I didn’t do nothing that every one of you hasn’t done, and you fucking want to judge me? Fuck you all!” Someone in the audience laughed, and Kasoniak looked up sharply, disapproval and anger in his eyes.

“Yeah, you laugh now, motherfucker!” Tillison shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “Ain’t one of you no better than me, and you let this fucking Adolph Hitler kill me! I’m just like Jesus, and every one of you is a fuckin’ Jew murdering me like you got -”

The rant continued. At the two-minute nod from the MP, Colonel Richard Kasoniak released the lever. The floor beneath the prisoner’s feet dropped with an audible clank, and the body fell. For more than a minute, the body twisted and struggled as Tillison slowly, horribly, choked to death. It wasn’t a clean kill. His neck didn't break, and instead he struggled futilely until his own body weight finally enabled the rope to press into his carotid artery deeply enough to cut the flow of oxygen to his brain.

The hangman, a corporal who used to enjoy sailing and was good with knots, looked up at Col. Kasoniak, his face bloodless. “I am so sorry, sir!” he choked, staring down at the body, aghast.

The colonel moved forward and put a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. “Son, you’ve never had to hang anyone before,” he consoled gently. “I think you did as well as anyone could have expected.”

He turned to face the silent crowd and stepped up to the microphone.