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It’s afternoon in the Java Shack. The sun is thin and wintry. I pour myself hot water and it occurs to me that apocalypse originally meant to uncover something. To reveal a hidden thing. I get that now. It was never about fire and lightning shearing off the palaces of the world. And if I wait, here on the black shores of the Ke
So on. So forth.
Zero Tolerance by Jonathan Maberry
Jonathan Maberry is the bestselling author of several novels, including Ghost Road Blues (wi
September 11, 2001 changed the world, and also changed science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Civilization collapsing had always been a topic of pere
America’s War on Terror has had many casualties, chief among them the nation’s view of itself. Images of U.S. soldiers torturing naked, helpless (and in many cases i
Nietzsche famously warned: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.” Our next story is a military thriller about zombies, terrorism, war, and some very grim and unsavory interrogation techniques. It’s a powerful story and, much as we might wish otherwise, a tale of our time.
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Battalion Aide Station
Near Helmand River Valley, Afghanistan
One Hour Ago
“I never thought that anyone that beautiful could scare the shit out of me.” The Marine sergeant sounded like he had a throatful of broken glass.
“Tell me about her, Sergeant,” I said.
He looked away so quickly that I knew he’d been waiting for that question. He tried to keep a poker face, but he was a couple tics off his game. Sleep deprivation, pain and the certain knowledge that his ass was in a sling can do that to you. Even to a tough son of a bitch like Sergeant Harper. As he turned I saw the way guilt and shame twisted his mouth; but his eyes had a different expression. One I couldn’t quite nail down.
“Tell you what? That I can’t bear to close my eyes ’cause when I do I see her? That I’ve had the shivering shits ever since we found her out there in the sand? I don’t mind admitting it,” said the sergeant. He started to say more, then closed his mouth and shook his head.
Harper’s uninjured hand was freckled with powder burns and skin was missing from two knuckles. He ran his trembling fingers through his sandy hair as he spoke. He did it two or three times each minute. His other hand lay in his lap, the hand cocooned inside gauze wrappings.
I waited. I had more time than he did.
After a full minute, though, I said, “Where did she come from?”
Harper sighed. “She was a refugee. We found her staggering in the foothills.”
“A refugee from what?”
“From the big meltdown out in the desert.”
“In the Helmand River Valley?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t tack on “sir.” He was fucking with me, and I was okay with that for now. He didn’t know me, didn’t really know how much shit he was in, or how deep a hole he’d dug for himself. All he knew was that his career in the Marines had hit a guard rail at seventy miles an hour, and now he was sitting across a small table from a guy wearing captain’s bars and no other military insignia. No medals or unit patch. No name tag. Harper had to be measuring that against the deferential way the colonel treated me. Like I outranked him, which I don’t. I’m not even in the military anymore. But in this particular matter I was able to throw more weight than the base commander. More weight than anyone else in or out of uniform on the continent. As far as Harper was concerned, when it came to throwing him a lifeline it was me and then God, and God was off the clock.
Harper couldn’t really know any of that, but he was smart enough and sly enough to know that I had some juice. On one hand, he rightly figured that I could drop him into a hole deeper than the one he’d dug for himself. On the other hand, he had information that I wanted, and he was stalling to see how best to play his only good card.
“How long are they going to keep me here?”
“To be determined, Sergeant. Do you feel you’re being inconvenienced?”
He didn’t rise to the bait.
“It’s been three days.”
“Not quite. Forty-seven hours and change.”
“Seems longer.” He didn’t even know that we’d already met. Not sure when I was going to spring that on him. It wouldn’t do anything to calm him down.
I opened my briefcase and took out a file folder.
“I’d like you to look at some photos,” I said and took two color eight-by-tens from my briefcase and laid them on the table. If I’d tossed a scorpion on the table he couldn’t have jerked back faster.
“Jesus Christ!”
I nodded at the print. “That’s her?”
“Fuck me,” muttered the sergeant. “Oh fuck me fuck me fuck me.”
Take that as a yes.
I sat back and waited him out. Sweat popped all along his forehead and leaked out from his hairline. He smelled like urine, cigarette smoke and testosterone, but I could smell fear, too. A whole lot of it. I used to think that was a myth, or something only dogs and horses could smell, but lately I’ve learned different. The kind of shit I deal with? I smell it a lot, and on myself, too. Like now, but I wasn’t going to let this asshole know it.
“Could…could you turn the pictures over? I don’t mean to be a pussy, but I don’t want her staring at me the whole time, y’know?”
“Sure,” I said, and did so. But I left them on the table. “Try to relax. Smoke one if you got any.”
He shook his head. “Never took it up. Jesus H. Christ. Wish I did.”
I opened my briefcase and took out two bottles of spring water, unscrewed one and handed it to him. He drank half of it down. Then I took some airline bottles of Jack Daniel’s and lined them up in front of him. One, two, three.
“If it helps,” I said.
He snatched one off the edge of the table, twisted off the cap and chugged it, then coughed. More bravado than brains.
“Tell me about the woman,” I said. “And what happened in the cave.”