The Rabid Brigadier (12 page)

“You ain’t gonna cut me up, is you, Sarge?” he asked with a pleading little-boy tone that was almost comical on such a mashed-in
face. But no one laughed.

“Now would I do that?” the sergeant asked with a harsh laugh. “The officers would have me eating pigshit out of a trough if
I was to be slicing up all these nice young bodies here.” He demonstrated on his somewhat less than enthusiastic “volunteer”
the many ways that a blade can do a man in. How to cut an artery, how to strike a disabling blow with a single thrust, coming
up from behind and grabbing the head and slicing the throat all in a split second. The recruits saw every bloody way that
steel can carve flesh, and then got to try it all out on one another. Two more were lost here—with stab wounds, one to the
shoulder, the other right into the cheek. Both would live, but the blood pouring from their wounds meant they were out,
finito
, washed up in the NAA before they had ever begun. Patton wanted only the cream for his forces. And those who survived getting
wounded in training were more likely to do the same in combat, as far as he could see. At any rate, he ran the show and thus
all of his training concepts were implemented.

Then it was staffs, which the sergeant was clearly as expert with as every other goddamned weapon. He poked and swung away
at Bull, showing countless lightning-quick moves that could send a man to the ground like a falling
tree. Again, the recruits got to try it all out on one another: a few bloody noses, cracked elbows and wrists along the way.
After an hour or two of the practice, the sergeant called a halt to the action and searched around for some subjects.

“Now, let’s see what the hell you’ve learned—if anything. Let’s see, how about you, Bull.” The man rose and stood next to
him, fearing another onslaught of one kind or another. “And”—he glanced around and saw Stone’s unflinching eyes staring right
back at him while everyone else was looking down at the ground, pretending not to exist. He had noticed that Stone seemed
quite adept at all the weapons, unusually good for a raw recruit. “And you!” He handed them each a long oak staff and stood
back. “Okay boys, go to it.”

Bull looked happy for the first time that afternoon. At last someone whose ass HE could kick. He circled around Stone, holding
the stick above his head like a baseball bat looking for a nice round object to smash.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you… much,” the big man snickered and Stone could see dark cruelty in the eyes, a desire to fuck him up
bad, a chance to earn back some of the macho that had been stripped off him like a veneer of cracked paint by Sergeant Zynishinski.

“And I promise the same, pal,” Stone said quietly back to him. He waited, holding the staff at loose readiness in front of
him. Suddenly Bull charged, swinging his staff like a club, as if he were out to split a log in two at the first stroke. But
Stone was faster. And when it comes to combat, speed always wins. He parried the strike with what looked like a quick flick
of the wrists and then lowered the stick between the huge man’s knees. Lumbering forward, Bull didn’t have time to stop and,
becoming entangled in the staff, fell to the ground with a loud thud. Stone stood back and stared down.

“Told you I wouldn’t hurt you.” This enraged the bear-sized man to such a degree that his face turned a blazing red and he
leapt up again, charging with frantic strokes. This time Stone stepped to the side at the last second as the stick whizzed
by his head. He slammed the end of his pole into the big man’s stomach, and as Bull whooshed air, came down with the side
of it on the back of the man’s neck. He struck with minimal force—he didn’t want to kill him—and Bull hit the dirt face first,
out cold before his nose dug into the ground.

“Jesus, that’s pretty fucking good,” the D.I. said, stepping over the prone body. “Where the hell did you learn all that stuff?”

“My dad was a Ranger,” Stone said with a thin smile. “He taught me a few pointers.” Bull came to, shook his head and then
realized what had happened to him. He rose again, his face even redder than before if that was possible and started at his
adversary again, unable to accept that a shrimp like that could take him down.

“Easy, easy, big fellow,” the sergeant said with a laugh. “This guy could’ve killed you if he wanted. You’ll get your chance
to let blood out there”—he swept his hand past the fence surrounding the fortress. “Enough of this for now. It’s up to each
of you: what you learn, what you remember. I won’t be out there when you face the bikers and the cannibals and all the other
slime that live out in the wastelands. If you do it wrong, you’ll find out.” He pushed Bull and Stone back into the ranks.
Stone saw the man he had just knocked down give him just about the coldest look he had ever seen and heard a whisper through
the bloody lips his front teeth had cut when he went down. “I’ll kill you, motherfucker—bet on it.”

“Now, from hands and knives to the real thing—the
things you’ll be using ninety-nine percent of the time you’re out there fighting: firearms,” the D.I. told them. He had another
of the recruits who had been pretty badly banged up sent off under escort of guards, and then led them across the parade grounds
to another large field with firing ranges, trenches and a shitload of weaponry—rifles, automatic weapons and even a few cannons.

“Later you’ll be given—those of you who make it through—specialized training in your assigned weapons. But for now we want
all of you to have at least a working knowledge of all our basic firepower. You never know when you’ll be out there and your
weapon will jam, and some cocksucker will be coming at you with blood in his eyes. You’d better be able to fire anything that
has a trigger. You understand?”

“Yes sir,” the recruits shouted back, bleary eyes weary of the hours they’d already put in. But there wasn’t the slightest
chance for rest as the sergeant started demonstrating the firing, loading, stripping and cleaning of a wide assortment of
firearms used by the NAA—M-16A’s, Colt AR-15’s, Mossberg 12 gauge pumps, Colt .45 combat pistols as well as the NATO 9mm Beretta.
They followed suit, taking apart and putting together an assortment of pistols and rifles on tarps on the ground, all under
the watchful eye of the D.I. The sergeant strode around, constantly pointing out the correct way, cursing the dumb “lobotomized
cows that God had sent him” to start getting it together. After about three hours they were led to the firing range and lay
down side by side in a long row. It was already starting to get dark again and there were no lights on the field, just what
filtered from the lights of the fortress itself about a quarter mile off. A truck rolled up and a squad of troops jumped out,
carrying what looked like bodies.

“We strive for realism here,” Sergeant Zynishinski said. “So we ain’t got no lives ones, but we do got some dead ones for
you to try out on. There ain’t nothing like shooting at real flesh—even if it’s a little on the rancid side—to give you a
feel for what bullets will do to a man. And if it’s the first time you’re shooting at human flesh, you can do your puking
now and get it over with.” The recruits blanched, and even Stone felt a little queasy as the corpses were carried out and
tied up to poles about a hundred feet from them until there were a dozen of the dead bodies in various states of decomposition
tied up and staring back at them through flat dead eyes. Stone wondered but didn’t ask where the leftovers had come from,
though the pockmarked, ugly faces of the recently deceased didn’t look like they had been people you would want to invite
home to dinner even when they had been alive.

They each got themselves in a comfortable position approximating the way the sergeant had demonstrated and sighted up their
M-16’s. The rifle was the more advanced 9mm model, but Stone didn’t really like the feel of it. It had always had a bad rep,
but this was what the Third Army had to use, so he used it. He sighted up the corpse directly ahead of him, getting a bead
right between the eyes. Then he corrected for what he sensed was a slightly downward push of the sights. The other men all
squinted madly down their barrels.

“Remember what I told you about vital points,” the sergeant said, stepping back behind the recruits who lay prone on the dirt,
elbows on the ground. “Shoot the motherfuckers!” he yelled. And the firing squad of recruits opened up with everything they
had. Stone pulled the trigger and the rifle jerked with a satisfying recoil. The head of Stone’s corpse seemed to suddenly
have a rather large hole missing
in the center of its chalky face—where the eyes and nose had once lived. Then other parts of it took hits as the men fired
again and again. Fingers blasted off, teeth and ears flew into the air, spiraling from the hit of the 9mm slugs. Arms and
legs seemed to jump and whip around in the air, as if they were dancing to some tune inaudible to human ears, as bullets tore
into them. Slowly they were ripped apart as whole sections of them disappeared from their bodies. After five minutes there
was hardly anything left except a pink gruel that coated the stakes, and various unrecognizable red things lying around the
ground.

“Excellent, excellent,” the D.I. said, as he halted the rifle practice and moved them along to the grenade range about one
hundred feet to the right of the corpse targets. He showed the proper holding, arming and throwing of the grenade, of which
the fort had a surplus. Each man was given one and then lined up behind a sandbagged protective wall that shielded the whole
team. Then, one at a time, they threw them. The grenades were live, and every throw was followed by a sharp snapping explosion
and a little spray of dust that trickled back to them through the now dark sky. Stone armed and threw his and ducked down.
He had used them before. He liked grenades. Anything that could take out five guys at a time was all right in his book.

One idiot—one of the very last—apparently didn’t quite get the message. He pulled the pin and then turned to the sergeant.
“Now what the hell… I supposed to do next?” The straw-chewer asked with a puzzled look. Even the D.I.’s face drained of blood
and he stuttered to throw the fucking thing away. The kid got the message at the last second and heaved the pineapple out
over the wall. It went off six feet from his chest. Somehow he lived. But the grenade had sent out a veritable wall of minute
shrapnel—and it had
almost skinned the thrower alive. The whole right side of his face, shoulder and chest had been razored down to a bloody layer
of muscle tissue. “Gosh sorry, Sarge,” the kid kept mumbling over and over as he lay on the ground. He kept mumbling it even
as medics carried him off on a stretcher, a trail of blood dripping all the way across the field like a highway stripe to
hell.

“That’s what happens to assholes,” Sergeant Zynishinski said, addressing the recruits. “Always know where your weapon is,
where your asshole is, and don’t confuse the two.” He stopped and counted how many were left after the various accidents of
training. Eighteen out of an original twenty-five. “My, we’re losing men tonight. Well, let’s see how many more we can lose.
It’s beddy bye. Let’s go.”

“Thank God, we get to sleep,” Bo, the man he had been working out with earlier, said to Stone as they jogged side by side
across the field.

“Somehow I think sleep is going to be a very tiring experience,” Stone answered dryly. The D.I. led them to a stretch of muddy
ground along the inside of the fence. The recent rains had make it thick like taffy so that the men could walk on it but if
they stopped for very long they started slowly shifting around as their feet corkscrewed down into the giving surface. A truck
was waiting for them at the far end of the swampy field, and two NAA supply men handed out a shovel and a tarp to each man.

“Now dig,” the sergeant ordered, staring at them with his arms folded. “’Cause this is the only chance you’re going to have
to rest for—let’s see,”—he looked at his watch—“five hours. Dig foxholes for yourselves. I don’t think I have to demonstrate
how. If you’re too stupid to do what a mole does without thinking, then you deserve whatever happens to you. And if you can,
sleep. I’ll be back in five. I have to
go have me some whiskey—and a steak, I’m hungry as a bear.” The sergeant laughed at them, just to rub it in a little more.
“Oh, by the way,” he shouted as he walked off, “there will be two machine-gun posts watching you at all times, and every once
in a while they’re going to let loose with a stream of slugs about two inches above the ground. So dig deep. Dig deep.” He
chuckled again as he headed off, leaving them to their own devices.

“I ain’t going to dig no damned foxhole,” several voices whispered to one another through the semi-darkness. The men were
tired, starving, feeling rebellious and ready to kill. Stone didn’t pay them any heed. He tied the tarp around his waist,
found the least muddy spot he could and slammed the shovel in. Although the ground was muddy it was a thick hard mud, almost
half-frozen with the rapidly dropping temperature as the moon popped up half-hidden behind a tree and a north wind blew down
from the great Arctic steppes. It was hard going, like shoveling almost dried cement, but he was able to get some small amount
of the stuff with each load.

“Say mister,” Bo said, wandering over to him with a sheepish expression on his face, somehow sensing that while the others
boldly proclaimed that they were tired of working and weren’t going to move a muscle, Stone was one of the few who really
knew what he was doing. “You think maybe me and you could team up for the night; you know, make a foxhole together?” It was
obvious that the kid didn’t know shit about shinola. But though huge, he seemed basically like a decent guy. Stone took pity
on him—with a frame that big he’d surely take a hit when the machine guns started firing.

“Sure, Bo, just start digging,” Stone said as he took another shovelful. “The quicker we get our condo built the quicker we
can get some shut-eye.” Bo wasn’t quite sure
what a condo was but smiled at the acceptance of his company and slammed into the thick mud and dirt with a vengeance. Some
of the others kept up their I-ain’t-gonna-do-shit attitude, but many of the recruits took Stone’s cue, teamed up and started
digging. Within ten minutes Stone and his roommate had created a space about eight by six by two, just big enough for the
two of them to squeeze in and—if they kept their asses down—wake up with their flesh intact.