of Wilmington? A few days ago, that would have been a death sentence.
Her curiosity piqued even more, Denise followed as the woman left Fifth Street behind and traveled an alleyway.
Denise crept between those buildings, too, rounding a corner into a courtyard of sorts, surrounded by the backsides of several small shops. She saw employee entrances and dumpsters. Multiple paths led away from the hidden clearing toward larger, primary streets.
Her quarry nowhere in sight, Denise stopped and stood straight.
“You’re pretty good,” the woman’s voice came.
Captain Forest emerged from behind a dumpster, smiling but holding an assault weapon ready in her hands.
“You forgot one thing though. Your shadow. Not much of one this time of day but just enough to give you away from around the corner. Remember that, next time you’re stalking someone.”
“I wasn’t stalking!” Denise nearly shouted.
“Hey, easy does it,” Forest calmed. “I’m just saying, next time you decide to follow someone you need to think it through a little more.”
“I followed you all the way from City Hall,” Denise boasted. “And I was watching you meet with the soldiers in there, too.”
Captain Forest tilted her head. “Is that a fact? Tell me, what’s a little girl like you doing walking around by yourself in this town?”
Denise narrowed her eyes and answered, “I’m not little; I’m eleven. Besides, what are you doing walking around this town all by your self?”
Forest held her rifle a little higher and asked, “Where’s yours?”
Denise said nothing.
Captain Forest stepped in front of Denise and ordered, “Turn around.”
Denise hesitated, not sure what the woman meant until she swiveled her fingers in the air to make the point.
Denise then understood what to do, but not why. The Captain examined the back of her neck, lifted her shirt, and-despite a series of protesting grunts from Denise-examined under her arms.
“Just looking, don’t worry.”
“Looking or what?” Denise chirped.
Forest completed the examination, stepped off a pace, and said, “Voggoth sucks.”
“Huh? Who’s Voog-Boog-Bugg-eth?”
“Never mind. That’s good,” Forest answered. “You’d be surprised how many of them give themselves away like that. Easy to provoke and all.”
“What are you talking about?”
Forest‘s eyes widened and realization swept across her face.
“Wait a second. You’re that girl from the chapel. The one who was almost Mutant foo-. I mean the one who was in the chapel.”
She straightened her clothes with a look of indignation and replied, “Yeah, well, my name is Denise.”
“Hello Denise, I’m Nina. Mind telling me why you were following me?”
Denise glanced around, looked at her feet, looked at the sky, and then finally answered, “I don’t know. I was bored. Like, super bored. Something to do, I guess.”
“I see.”
“Hey, I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I can do what I want. I can take care of myself.”
Nina said, “I can see that. You move pretty good. Got some real potential.”
A smile exploded onto Denise’s face. “Really?” But she quickly suppressed the grin, nearly turning it into a frown, and mumbled, “I mean I know that.”
The sound of an explosion rolled in from the distance, passing overhead like the calling card of a distant thunderstorm. Both women shot their eyes to the clear blue sky above.
Nina said, “You know, I think we can both take care of ourselves pretty good. What do you think?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes. Sure we can.”
“But you know the first thing that you do to take care of yourself?”
“What’s that?” Denise asked Nina.
“You’re smart about where you go. You don’t put yourself in bad spots.”
“Yeah, sure, I know that, geez,” Denise rolled her eyes.
“Let’s get out of this spot for now. Come with me.”
Denise mulled it over for all of two seconds before answering, “Well, okay. I’ve got nothing better to do right now, anyway.”
When they had first came onboard, Jon thought he would never get accustomed to it, but in reality it had only taken him four days to adjust to the constant droning pervading the sub; the combined sound of engines and equipment creating a vibration of noise that served as background to everything.
The first few days after departing Hopedale, he occasionally sniffed fresh air from the conning tower. Once entering Baffin Bay, Farway kept the Newport News submerged. Jon suspected Farway felt naked cruising on the surface, no doubt an impulse dating to the cold war.
Jon became mindful of the watertight doors and remembered many Hollywood movies where a sub Captain sealed crewmembers in flooded compartment to save the ship. That thought put a flutter in his belly nearly as constant as the vibration through the boat.
As they did each evening, Jon Brewer and Reverend Johnny joined Farway and his Executive Officer for dinner, after which they swapped stories.
One night Jon and the Reverend presented a detailed accounting of the Battle of Five Armies. Another time, Farway had told them about arriving at their homeport of Norfolk and finding it infested with fluffy horned guinea pig things walking five feet tall on hind legs.
“Sort of like a chia pet gone mad,” the XO had said.
This evening in the small cubicle that served as the Captain’s dining room, the conversation turned to the Newport News’ missions for Gordon Knox. More specifically, inserting spies overseas.
“We went through the straits of Gibraltar last year and dropped a team off in Algeria. We were supposed to make a pick up in Sicily but the group never showed.”
Of course, John Brewer reviewed the data gathered by intelligence agents. Reverend Johnny had also seen much of it. Yet that did not stop the Reverend from taking the conversation in his favorite direction.
“Pray tell, Captain, what words are being spoken in whispers about our best friends?”
The Reverend’s question bewildered Farway, who paused in the middle of sipping pseudo-tea from a mug. Jon Brewer stepped in to explain.
“He means The Order. Rev here has a special place in his heart for that group.”
Reverend Johnny said, “The last time we had contact with that vile band was in Baltimore. We brought the Father’s fire upon that nest of heretics. You should have seen them burn.”
While Johnny boomed a laugh, Brewer translated, “We destroyed several of The Order’s bases over the past five years. The first was in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Then there was a smaller one in Deptford, New Jersey; two outside of Harrisburg and the last one we’ve seen was in a Baltimore suburb. We think we stamped them off the continent before they could gain a real foothold.”
What little Farway knew came as no surprise to either of his passengers, but it spurred talk of Voggoth which the Reverend wanted to hear, the same way grandchildren begged to be told their favorite stories again and again.
“From what we’ve seen, they’re big in Eurasia and the Far East. That’s about all I know. What do you hear?”
After swallowing the last drop of ‘tea’ in his mug, Brewer answered, “We hear the same thing. From what we can tell, they started off somewhere in Russia. Our teams at the Pentagon and White House found urgent communications from the Russian government describing the types of forces we would expect from our pal Voggoth. We think he poofed in over there and spread out.”
