Thou Shalt Not Kill...Sometimes (Ch7)
Chapter 7 in THEDA'S TIME MACHINE. Așa Jackson, who has seen the worse of man's inhumanity to man, makes enemies across time.
Asa Jackson leaned against the wall of his barracks, smoking a cigarette, counting all the ways to steal the cherry-red Stanley. Billy, that idiot, had parked it just off the road, knowing the other men wouldn’t dare touch it, as it was Major Whittaker’s car. And disobeying an order from that son of a bitch wasn’t an option for the good men of Fort Riley, some of whom he already knew, although they didn’t know him. Yet. He wouldn’t meet them for another fifteen years.
The late afternoon sun warmed him as the men filed in from the fields or rode past on horseback, appearing to Jackson like a story long told had come to life. It was just before mess time and although he was hungry and could smell the roast beef burping from the dining hall smokestacks, he wasn’t in any hurry to sit down to a plate of that slop. He had enough of military grade food in his life. He thought maybe he could have a moment of peace, but thoughts of Miss Theodora Evora kept popping unwelcomed in his mind.
He exhaled, framing the red car in white smoke, fighting his own mind. He wanted to extinguish all thoughts of her and return to the cold calculations necessary to drive that red Stanley off the base, but his mind couldn’t fight images of her large eyes over the magazine, or dropping the name of the motorcycle like a know-it-all. When orders came down to stop the train and retrieve Dr. Evora’s wife and two daughters, it was the last thing Jackson needed. He liked the doctor, but he had a fine window of time to get this job done and he was already failing. That morning while driving Evora to the General Building, the doctor mentioned that his family was arriving on the eleven o’clock train. He described his elegant wife, whose family had died tragically in a fire, leaving her a young orphan with a large sum of money; and his elder daughter, a classic beauty, who was courted by every eligible young man. But the man’s voice had softened and filled with admiration when speaking of his younger daughter, the one who recorded his medical school lectures by hand and was destined to break barriers by becoming a doctor, and had been thrown out of her posh private school for giving a report on why the war was wrong and how the government was lying to people.
“Courting the Sedition Act,” Dr. Evora chuckled. “Theda’s a ball of trouble, but she’s brilliant. She makes the rest of the men at that school look like mental dullards. She defends what she believes in, and this time it cost her. Although to hear her tell it, she wasn’t devastated to be thrown out of that, how did she put it? ‘Hell hole of raised noses and prissy manners.’ Honest people with mettle always find conflict.”
Jackson had only half-listened, nodding in the right places. He wasn’t interested in silly girls getting chucked from what had to be a very expensive school. On these morning and afternoon chauffeuring jobs, he listened for anything that would help him get into the General Building after all the doctors and workers went home. And for any signs of Thrax, and who he was masquerading as this time.
The General Building was set far away from the other buildings on Fort Riley at the end of a long dirt road. The back of it faced the Republican River and the land leading up to the river was elevated so from the main road the building seemed to rise out of nowhere. This was the place Jackson’s father had spoken of when Jackson was little and wanted to hear war stories. Seneca Jackson had come through Fort Riley like hundreds of thousands of other men and had worked as a cleanup crew for the medial researchers in this building. The only stories he ever told of The Great War involved things he had seen at this building, and what he thought was really going on there. Something strange, he would say, while skinning a deer or sharpening his knife. Something off. Something secret.
Jackson longed to see his father as a young man, but before he set off, he checked his father’s war papers and knew he was in Belgium at this time. Breaking the cardinal rule, the one where you kept far, far away from your family, wasn’t going to be a problem.
His mother…well…best not to think of it yet. Not until he was done with his business here.
That morning, Jackson had dropped off the doctor and returned to the barracks where Billy was waiting. “C’mon, Jack” he said, slapping Jackson on the back in a way that made Jackson want to grab his arm and twist it. “The Major wants us to run down that train before it gets to Junction City and pick up Doc Evora’s family.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s some criminal that they think’s on that train and Doc got scared that his women are there with no protection.”
A soldier named Cyril appeared in the doorway with a pile of papers. “Let’s go, men. Take these. Gotta show the people on the train when we get there. Packard’s loading up.” He handed a few to Billy and disappeared.
Jackson kept his face neutral but the thought of wasting all that time stopping a train was infuriating. He swallowed his annoyance and shifted his mind to play the simple country boy here to serve his country. “Whatever the good doctor wants, that’s what we’ll give him.” He buttoned up his overcoat.
“Good man,” Billy slapped him again and handed him one of the papers.
Jackson held tight to the simpleton smile, but it dropped the instant he looked at the paper, a hard thud forming in his chest as his heart raced. Holy Christ, he thought. Dr. Andersen. Michael. Thrax knows he’s coming? Or just covering all bases?
“I think I’ll take the motorcycle,” he said, rolling up the paper, tucking it into his coat and walking past Billy. If he found Michael on that train before they did, there was a chance he could speed him away before anyone was the wiser.
“Wait, go with us in the truck!” Billy called.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
Now Jackson dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot heel, resisting the urge to light another. He didn’t find Michael on the train, but the unexpected finding of Theda was throwing him off course. The other train passengers were annoyed at the stop and puffing up to issue a round of complaints but Miss Evora’s terrified expression had taken him aback. So much so that he forgot his country yokel accent and spoke to her in his normal voice, possibly blowing his cover, something he never did. They had called him the Ghost in the army. He had an uncanny ability to blend in so seamlessly that he had been sent as a spy into German territory, his German without accent, his ears attuned to regionalisms and slang that couldn’t be taught in a school. Slipping up meant death. The first glance at her rattled him in a way that he had never experienced with any past girlfriend, and he was twenty-seven years old.
It was easy to see that the older sister was the one everyone made a fuss over, such as the way fool Billy slobbered all over her. But he wasn’t interested in that type of girl. He had met a lot of them when he was attending college and had made a few light friendships with guys who were way above his humble station in life. He folded his arms and flexed his muscles in the tight and itchy tunic. Any involvement with her was pointless.
The next few days would determine everything and there were only two ways it could end. He either got killed, or he killed Thrax. And even if both of those things didn’t happen, he had to get out of Fort Riley before the result of Thrax’s work hit the military base like a bomb. He had been around in 1945 and he wished he could tell these men that there were worse things waiting to happen. Worse than all the gas and flamethrowers combined. The other part that they didn’t know was the ancient way to kill a massive amount of people, one that had been around since the inception of humans, was coming to the base in a matter of days. Influenza, boys. You can’t run from it. It’s the original grim reaper. He was here to end it, and he had to see it through, no matter what he was feeling. Theda Evora was already lost to him. There was no ditching it all to ride off into the sunset with the fair maiden.
Jackson watched a group of soldiers coming in from the field, their guns hanging from their shoulders and laughing over a shared joke. He had run into men that he knew, the fathers of the boys he had grown up with. He knew these men in a future where a Great Depression and Dust Bowl carved deep lines into their tanned faces. But here, they were still young and bright. They had no idea what was in front of them in Europe and beyond.
And one of those fathers was standing right in front of him.
“Hey, Jack! Wanna take a walk?”
Billy Rankin was bright eyed and as bushy tailed as a fox who found a new mate. And he probably thought he had found one, but if he had any brains, he would already know that there wasn’t a chance in a frozen over hell that Dr. Evora was going to allow his peach of an older daughter to marry a Kansas farm boy.
“Sure,” Jackson lifted his hat, showing that golly-gee expression that made him fade into the background. Despite his build and height of six-feet-four-inches, the demeanor had the effect of neutralizing the innate competitiveness of other males. It negated any threat that his size might otherwise have, and that was the desired effect. The more unobtrusive he seemed, the more the others allowed him to see of themselves, as if he were a pet instead of a peer.
They started off toward the path that led to the Kansas River. “You might as well get some rest before tonight, because we’re taking those girls to Army City for some fun,” Billy said.
Jackson felt a jolt of excitement at seeing Theda again but kept his smile light. “You gonna get that peach? Seems to me that she might be a little too rich for your blood, Bill.”
Billy laughed. “No, sir, you just wait. I just might be the son in law of one of the most famous doctors in this country!”
It was Jackson’s turn to laugh. “I wish I had a lick of your confidence. But you’re going to get your ass handed to you if you really think Doc’s going to let you court her.”
“Pessimist. My daddy says that if you hold a picture of the deer in your mind while on a hunt, that you’d find that deer and it would be yours. Why can’t I do the same with the lovely Miss Violet?”
They were past the barracks and approaching the pine trees and scrub bushes on the banks of the river. Jackson inhaled the scent of evergreen beginning to warm to early spring, and the ice of the river breaking into the rush.
“Shooting a deer is easier than marrying a rich girl,” Jackson said.
“Depends on who you are, now doesn’t it? If I were a rich man, then marrying a rich girl would be easy and I’d probably be incompetent in the hunt.”
Ahead an off-shoot of the path turned a sharp left, and voices filtered through the trees. In a small clearing was a group of men, backs to them.
“Push ‘im! Give ‘im a good shove! Let’s go!” Jackson recognized the voice as Cyril Lomax from the morning’s train expedition. Again? God, I hate that guy.
A man with the long overcoat (now called trench coats after the coats worn ‘over there’) stood about twenty feet back from the small crowd. He turned, perhaps hearing Jackson and Billy’s footsteps, and set his ice blue eyes on them. Sargent Hank Peterson wasn’t yet thirty years old but had a hardness about him that solidified trust in him from the upper ranks. He had taken a liking to Jackson, but Jackson remained wary of him. He seemed to Jackson a person who went through the motions of being a person, and inside there was an emptiness that Jackson couldn’t articulate but felt in his bones.
Peterson offered a cold smile. “Come on over, boys. We got ourselves a catfish here who needs fileting.” Peterson stood aside.
Hanging upside down from a low branch was a man. His uniform was torn and dirty, and his hands were bound behind his back. He swung slowly like a pendulum and his hair dragged in a puddle of mud. With each swing the mud splashed in his eyes and nose, making him choke and sputter.
“Why don’t you go and give this boy a little shove?” Peterson said quietly. “These boys don’t like to fight, do they? No, they don’t. They sit all pretty in their uniform and say that they don’t want to go with us across the ocean to fight them Krauts. They’d rather leave the hard work to men like us. Maybe we gotta change their minds, huh?”
Billy whooped and stepped into the circle. He put his whole shoulder into the man and pushed him hard, then backed up while the others cheered. The man on the rope swung in a ten-foot arc and the rope twisted.
“These menon-tights can’t get it up for nothing but their church! Even Jesus thinks they’re shit!” Cyril clapped his hands and the three other soldiers, whom Jackson had seen around but not passed more than a few words with, joined in the clapping.
“Mennonites,” Jackson corrected, disgust filling him. He was witnessing another one of his father’s stories come to life. The Mennonites, who rejected the war as they rejected all violence, who took thou shalt not kill seriously, were physically harassed at Fort Riley, where they were sent to jail after their trials in Leavenworth. The other men despised the Mennonites. They sprung the newly arrived prisoners from jail in the middle of the night and allowed a head start in the fields only to rev their motorcycle engines and chase like some mechanical fox hunt. And here, Jackson witnessed yet another torment intended on breaking them.
Jackson had seen what evil men could do. He had been throughout Europe. He knew all too well. And he knew it started like this.
Peterson’s ice eyes swung his way and narrowed. “What’s that, Jack?” he asked softly, his calm and caressing voice unnerved Jackson, as if a snake turned human.
“I have no interest in shoving him. Sir.” Jackson looked directly into Peterson’s eyes. Despite their quiet voices, the other men sensed conflict and turned to watch, as the Mennonite swung slowly, the velocity of the early shove wearing off.
“No interest?” Peterson said pleasantly. “This here boy is a pansy. Can you imagine not wanting to fight those dirty Huns even after your country calls you? That sounds like the worst yellow to me. It doesn’t to you, Asa?”
“It does,” Jackson felt a flood of chemicals, the primitive kind that signal a threat. “It sounds like the worst of them. This just isn’t for me.”
“Then what is for you? Jack?” Cyril screeched and walked a few paces toward them.
“You do what you want. I ain’t gonna say anything,” he fell into the ungrammatical local vernacular, hoping he would sound again like one of them.
“And you do what you want. Sometimes, though, what you want is no damn good,” Peterson raised his colorless brows.
“It ain’t right, sir.”
“And what if you find yourself like this boy is, eh? Anyone here gonna save your ass?”
Jackson didn’t have to glance at the others to see that they were ready to jump him if Peterson gave the signal. Jackson held Peterson’s gaze, hoping it wouldn’t happen. He dropped his right arm and flexed his hand, ready to pull the five-inch dagger from a special pocket in his boot. He wasn’t afraid of them. He had seen these boys drill, the clumsy way they used the bayonet, and they weren’t even good at hand-to-hand training. His fear was that he’d kill one of them. With his knife skills he could down two of them and end their fears of meeting the Kaiser for good. But it was impossible. If he got thrown into jail he’d never get back.
“Rankin,” Peterson raised his voice, eyes never leaving Jackson’s. “Why don’t you escort Private Jackson to the mess hall where he can sit and relax nicely with a cup of coffee, while the real men do the work around here?”
Jackson swept his eyes around the group, not dropping his gaze even at their stares of hatred. He landed last on Peterson and they stared at each other for a tense moment, then Jackson raised his hand in a salute. It was all he could do not to spit on Peterson’s boots. He turned and walked out of the grove of pines.
Footsteps behind him. Jackson breathed in the way that staved off the worst flare of temper, but even the heightened oxygen was doing nothing for the feelings of wanting to tear limbs off. He was almost to the barracks when the footsteps behind him grew a voice.
“Christ, you’re stupid,” Billy said, putting one hand on his shoulder.
Jackson whipped around so fast that Billy’s hand flew from his shoulder and he stepped back and almost fell over, but Jackson grabbed the front of his trench coat and held him up.
“You watch what you say, or you might be finding yourself swimming in the Republican,” Jackson rattled him.
Billy grabbed Jackson’s hands and tried to ease his grip, but Jackson released him so fast that he almost tumbled over. “I’m just looking out for you! What in hell do you think you’re going to do about those boys now? Huh? They’ll be after you.”
“I don’t give a tin shit what they do.” Jackson bit off each word.
“And what happens when we’re over there, huh?” Billy went on. “You need guys watching your ass at all times. That’s what you do in war. You watch out for each other. You think these guys are going to watch out for you? They’ll just as soon shoot you before they shoot any of them Huns.”
“I could give a shit less,” Jackson said, but the fight was draining from him. I’m wasting my time. I need to focus if I’m going to get out of here alive.
“No one’s gonna look out of you,” Billy tried again.
“I don’t need anyone to.” Jackson turned and walked.
“I don’t want to die.” It was so simple and honest that Jackson stopped and stared at him again. For a moment, he felt a kinship with him that was beyond the man he knew as a child. They had both been young soldiers, ready to ship off to places they would probably never have seen in peacetime. And the high possibility they would never see their home again.
But that wasn’t going to be William Rankin’s fate.
“You won’t die. You’re gonna come back.” And father a child, a son. He’s going to have your eyes. And he’ll be a good kid. Not like his dog of an old man.
“How do you know?” He swiped a hand over his eyes.
“I just do. Let’s go to the mess hall. As if we haven’t had enough shit in one day.”
READ CHAPTER 8 HERE:
Travel back to the beginning, chapter 1:
Oh my gosh! I love this book!