Bullet Through Your Face (improved format) (28 page)

And with that diatribe, the rest of the members of Alpha 2/81
jumped to their feet and applauded, much in the same way that the
members of VFW Post 3063 applauded him every week right here
at their HQ in Luntville, after which they all sat around drinking
beer and telling neat war stories so they wouldn’t have to go home
while their wives were still up. Yes, it was a grand country, and Art
reasoned that every time back in the Nam when he’d slammed a one fifty five full of APERS or white phosphorous into that big Sheridan breach,
he’d helped make it a little greater. And, no, he’d never killed any
babies—well, there was that pack of 10-year-olds on Highway
13 and Art had chopped them up with the coax but, hell, the kids
were all sappers anyway. If someone was trying to kill you, what
difference did it make how old they were? Just another lesbo homo
freako perverto pinko druggo sensibility. So, anyway, right now Art
lumbered back up and said “Jimmy fix me up with another Dixie,
will ya?” and then he excused himself to the rear of the meeting hall
and slipped into the bathroom.

He urinated with gusto, relishing the
fine life God had given
him, the nice doublewide he fully owned now, the nice truck (not
one of those Jap jobs, a
Ford
), and a fine job at the mill. And just as
he would damn near
fill
that urinal with the wares of his bladder—

“Daggit!”
—all the lights went off.
An unconscious change in his position caused the remaining

stream of his kidney juice to buffet against the side of the urinal and
splashed back onto his slacks.
“Daggit!”
But what happened to the lights? At first he suspected that
maybe someone had turned them off as a joke but then no one was in
here but him, and if anyone else had entered he’d have certainly seen
them since he was standing right next to the fucking door.
Power
failure?
he considered. Sure, it happened sometimes during storms
but tonight there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Just the moon, the stars,
and the twilight heavens.
“What’n dang tarnations!” he exclaimed. “A blammed fuse
must’a blowed!” He zipped back up and turned, feeling for the door
handle, but when he pulled that door open—
“Hoooooly—”
Art stuck his big face in the door gap, peering out into the meeting
hall. No lights out there, either, at least not the white overhead
fluorescent lights he would expect.

It was blue light he saw now. A dark,
fluttering blue light that
barely offered any illumination at all. Kind of reminded him of
those hippie blacklights they had in the sixties, that’d light up pinko
peacenick hippie peace posters.

And then—
The windows began to explode—
And he saw—

“Simple, Chief Kinion,” the salubrious Captain Majora explained
once they got back to the station. “Pure coincidence, yes, but I merely
overheard your dispatch to 861 Mount Airy Road over my police
scanner. I happened to be in the area—that’s why I got there first
and was able to call the State Health Department and apprise them
of status at the County Watch-House for Boys. Then they deployed
the EMT buses.”

“
Now
I get’cha, Captain,” the Chief confessed, perfectly
satisfied with the shapely woman’s account. “You Army folks shore
are thorough. Who’d have thunk’a that: monitorin’ the police radio
band.”

Hays smirked, pluggin’ the coffee pot in across the booking
room. “One question, though, Captain. You say you just ‘happened’
to be in the area. Well what did you just ‘happen’ ta be doin’, huh?”

“Hays, how the Captain spends her time ain’t none’a yer
business,” Kinion said through a smrik of his own.
“Yeah, but Chief, I just thank it’s a mite—”
“Just shut up and fetch the coffee like I tolt ya!” Then the Chief
turned his jowls to the lovely Captain who sat across from him at the
desk. “I’se shorely apolergize fer the sassy tone my deputy’s taken
of late.”
“No apology necessary, Chief,” Majora replied, and it might be worth noting that, now, she was not dressed in her of
ficial Army
summer khakis but instead a real purdy burgundy blouse and a pair’a
black denim jeans that, well, accentuated her southerly regions quite
nicely. “I was just out for a drive, familiarizing myself with the locale,
and I might add, Chief, this is a beautiful town you have here.”

“Please, Chief, call me Dana,” she invited. “It’s perfectly
appropriate when I’m off duty and not in standard duty uniform.”
The Chief about crapped his size 54 trousers.
Gawd in Heaven!
She just asked me ta call her by her first name! Maybe . . . maybe she
really has taken a likin’to me!
“And I must say,” she continued, leveling those cool, clear eyes,
“I really am honored to be able to work with a man so professional
and perceptive.”
The Chief about crapped again.
But it was back to business right quick, it was, as the indefectible
Captain Majora went on further: “It’s so anomalous, though, don’t
you think, Chief? Thirty teenage boys and three detention officers,
all rendered simultaneously unconscious—”
The Chief nodded. “And at the same time too.”
“All in the same position, and with their genitals exposed.”
“They was exposed all right,” Hays cut in, “and hard as rocks
and throbbin’.”
“Hays!” Kinion yelled. “Weren’t you supposed ta be makin’
coffee?”
“It’s comin’, boss. Got the filter in alls loaded up with yer
favorite.”
“Fine!” The Chief caught himself; he didn’t want to seem
brusk in front of the Captain, and he certainly wanted her to get a
full gander at his professional side. “But ta respond ta yer question,
Captain—er, I’se mean
Dana . . .
I
cain’t think of a much in the way
of a crederable reason that would explain how all them fellas come
ta be knocked out. Maybe bad venterlation, or, well, come ta thank of
it, I’se remember quite a ways back when Fort Paduanna was still
open and they’se was doin’ some field exercises and happened to
be usin’ tear-gas, so’s all that tear gas blowed up near town and had
our Boy Scout Troop 469 pitchin’ a fit out in the woods during their
annual Camporee.”

Captain Majora’s pretty eyes opened right up. “What a brilliant
conjecture of feasibility, Chief! It never occurred to me!”
Kinion’s jaw dropped. It were wonderful that she referred to
somethin’ ta come out his mouth as brilliant, but . . .
What the hail’s
she mean?
“What? You mean like tear-gas could do somethin’ like
that?”
“No, Chief, not tear gas, but what if there was an accidental leak
of some Army incapacitant, like carbon trioxide or DBN? Those
gasses can render human beings unconscious for protracted periods,
Chief. And, as I mentioned yesterday, Fort Paduanna is no longer on
active operational status but it still is utilized as a redeposition vault
for binary chemical weapons awaiting destruction. I’d say it’s more
than reasonably likely that they have some incapacitating agents
stored there too, and it’s a good bet that some of it leaked out into
the air.”
Naturally, the Chief nodded in full agreement. “Well, Dana,
that’s ‘zactly what I was gettin’ at.”
More boos, then, fron the peanuts gallery. “Aw, shee-it, Chief.
Fort Paduanna’s an easy 30 miles away. What, you’s sayin’ some
milertary
gas
blowed
thirty miles
across the boondocks and wound
up in the dang County Watch-House fer Boys? Less chance’a that
than the Saints winnin’ the Super Bowl—”
“Hays! You leave the calculatin’ta the Captain’n me!” the Chief
advised rather loudly. “And how long’s it take you to pour coffee?”
Hays winked discreetly at the Chief. “Shouldn’t take too long
now fer this baby ta get drippin’, boss.”
“Actually, Chief,” the exquisite Captain Majora announced,
glancing at her milspec wristwatch, “it’s gaining on twenty-two hundred
hours. I need to contact my brigade commander to begin an
investigation on the ensiled inventory at Fort Paduanna. Then I need
to turn in. Early to bed, early to rise—that’s the Army.”