Location: Undeadville, San Diego — Fortress
Nothing to do except hang out and try not to kill each other. We’re flush with supplies for a day or two but no reason to start stroking each other’s egos after yesterday’s mess. Frankly, I’m surprised we’re still alive. And with all of these supplies I’m really missing Tylenol. My body feels like I worked out until I puked.
So the day we boarded up the place, Joel had the bright idea to fill the tubs with water. We drank until our eyeballs were floating and then we drank some more. Joel kept telling me what it would be like in a week when the water stopped running and he was right. Now the water tastes foul and I’m worried about mosquitoes. I run a vegetable strainer over the surface every few hours. Tomorrow I’ll use cheesecloth but that won’t kill parasites. So do we burn through the few remaining Sterno cans boiling water or just put up with a bad case of the shits?
Joel said we can treat the water with a little bleach but I’ll be damned if I can find a bottle in the house. I guess we’ll have to find some on our next run.
Supplies:
1 pound of Jasmine rice
¼ pound of dried beans
1 ½ pounds of tofu-jerky
7 cans of tuna
2 cans of cat food — where the hell is Butch?
6 boxes of pasta
1 beautiful jar of spaghetti sauce
5 cans of various veggies
2 cans of mixed
1 case of canned spinach
“When you gonna talk about how we met?” Joel pointed at my logbook. I had the pen ready to start recounting our day — and that was going to be boring.
Day X: Sat on ass. Stared at empty beer bottles. Pissed in a bucket.
“Like the day you bought me flowers and a drink?” I looked across the Sterno flame and batted my eyelashes at Joel. “Fucking Marines. Always trying to get into a lady’s panties.”
We had a can of water boiling up some rice so we could put it aside and let the grain set. It was the quickest way to accomplish two tasks. Boil water and have a little food in an hour. I’d probably toss in some tofu jerky just to add to the blandness.
Fortress was hot. It might be October out there, but this house hadn’t had a breath of fresh air in days. No fans, no central air. That meant we sat in a room and fanned ourselves with a collection of Playboys I’d found stashed under a kid’s bed.
“Yours were pretty fucking frigid,” Joel chuckled, “and it took a whole bottle, but just like a Navy puke, you put out on the first date.”
I stifled laughter.
“Too bad you couldn’t get it up. You know they make little blue pills for that?”
Joel had his assault rifle stripped and was quizzing me on parts while rubbing them down with motor oil. His towel had been white a few days ago. Now it looked as grimy as gopher guts.
“Marines are giant blue pills. Just being in the Corps gets me hard,” he said. “That’s what my old Drill Sergeant used to say just before he quarter-decked the shit out of us.”
“Drill Sergeants are like that. Dicks.”
“He was just doin’ his job. Gunny made me the man I am today.”
“Hooah!” I said.
“They only say that in movies,” Joel retorted.
“Imagine I’m Brad Pitt when I say it.”
Joel held out a long piece of metal that looked like a tube. “What’s this called?”
“The bolt thing.”
He sighed and tossed it to me. “It’s not called ‘the bolt thing,’ it’s called a bolt carrier assembly and even Brad Pitt would know, because I bet he pays more attention than you whether he’s stripping a gun or that hot wife of his. Now take this part.” Joel gave me the charging handle, something I actually remembered the name of. I took the pieces and slid the handle into the bolt carrier assembly, locking it in place before giving it back.
“There.”
“You ain’t as useless as I thought.”
“Guess not.”
“Too fucking hot for this. Go write about the ship,” Joel grumbled.
I’d avoided writing that chapter for a lot of reasons, but after the last few days of scrambling for survival I knew it was time to get it out of my system. If I waited much longer I was going to start forgetting important facts.
“Not yet. Man, I really want to say it.”
“Don’t. We made it and I don’t need thanks. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t a team, even if you are a stupid fucking hole snipe.”
“Words hurt, Joel. Words hurt.” I leaned over my friend. Even seated I towered over him, but he didn’t back down.
“Why all that writing anyway? Never heard of a hole snipe fond of jotting things down besides readings.”
“I always wanted to be a writer. Sue me.”
“What-the-fuck-ever. Just do it. Write about the boat; we ain’t getting any younger and we might be dead and eaten tomorrow.”
“Ship, it’s called a ship. A boat has oars — and what a morbid fuck you are today!”
“Like I said. What-the-fuck-ever. Just write it.”
So I did.
05:45 hours approximate
Location: USS McClusky, San Diego CA
I had the worst fucking hangover of my life the day the world went to shit. I lay in my bunk, hand over my eyes, and dreaded going on watch. My head pounded and my mouth felt like someone shit in it. We ain’t supposed to drink at sea but I’m a classic Navy alcoholic and I keep a stash of booze you wouldn’t believe. Last night I dumped a third of a 2-liter Pepsi down the drain and topped it off with some Thai whiskey I picked up in Pattaya Beach.
That was only two hours ago. I barely got enough sleep as it was. Emergency flight ops had blown me out of my bunk, and that shit went on until dawn.
There were rumors that something big was happening back at base, and that’s why we were recalled. Then flight ops had started and never ended. Helos arrived and departed every fifteen minutes — that should have been my first clue that something was really wrong.
I had about fifteen minutes to shit, shower, and shave. Smitty got to be an angry little bitch when I was late even though he’d never been on time for watch a day in his life.
Then the alarm sounded and I thought my head was literally going to explode.
“General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battlesta…”
The first line wasn’t even finished, unless you counted the screaming. I sprang up and jumped out of my top bunk. Why a top bunk after this many years in the Navy? Because I fucking like it, that’s why.
I stared up at the speakers and wondered whose idea of a joke that had been.
“The fuck was that shit?” Feely asked.
He wore a pair of South Park boxers and socks that smelled like death. Feely had a weird OCD thing with socks and only changed them once a week. One time I bought him a bag of socks at the ship commissary and left them on his bunk. Gratis. He tossed them in the trash.
I dug out a pair of dark blue overalls and gave them the sniff test. Yeah, they’d get me through one more day. They weren’t as bad as Feely’s socks. Those fuckers were probably going to get up and walk around on their own.
Wanglund fell out of his bunk and looked ready to punch anyone that got in his way. His mustache was turning into a biker’s handlebar, but with shore in sight today he’d be shaving it. CHENG might put up with that shit on deployment but not when we were headed for port. The thing about Wanglund was that he was bigger than me and I’m a big dude. He was a boiler tech and looked like a gorilla, with hairy arms and enough fur on his back to let him fill in for the next Planet of the Apes movie.
Wanglund also owed me a hundred bucks from our last game of spades. I’d mention it later when it wasn’t so early in the morning and he didn’t look like punching someone.