Dew refused to cry. Just wasn’t going to happen. It wanted to come out, and he had trouble fighting it back, but no way in hell. He wasn’t in this business to make friends. It hurt, sure it did, but Malcolm Johnson wasn’t his first friend to die in the line of duty.
How much of this did he have to deal with? How much could he take? How many more people did he have to see die?
How many more people…did he have to kill?
He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He needed to reconnect.
Dew picked up his small cell phone, the normal one, and dialed. It rang three times before she answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Cynthia, it’s Dew.”
“Oh, hi, how are you?” Her words carried history, decades of back story, if you will. Dew and Cynthia had hated each other once, hated each other with a passion that went even beyond what he felt for the enemy during a battle. That hatred was born out of love, deep, all-encompassing love for the same person.
That person was Sharon, Dew’s only child.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve been a lot better, a lot of times,” Dew said. “But don’t tell Sharon that, okay?”
“Sure thing. You want me to put her on?”
“Please.”
“Hold on one sec.”
They would never, ever be friends, he and Cynthia, but at least they had respect for each other. They had to, because Sharon loved them both, and when Dew and Cynthia fought, it tore Sharon apart.
It had been hard to hear that his little girl thought she was a lesbian. But that was nothing compared to the pain and anger he felt seven years later when he heard Sharon and Cynthia were more than “partners”-they had performed some union ceremony or what have you, and they were basically married. Wife and wife. He’d raged, screamed at them both, called them names he wished he hadn’t. Cynthia, of course, had screamed back. She wanted to protect Sharon, Dew understood that now. Cynthia also happened to despise men in general, especially gruff, bossy, unemotional military men-which happened to sum up Dew Phillips in a nutshell. But Cynthia’s constant attacks on Dew, both when he was there and when he wasn’t, took their toll on Sharon. Dew hated. Cynthia hated. Sharon just wasn’t wired that way. Sharon loved, pure and simple.
It took another two years after the “union” bullshit, but Dew finally understood that this was the real deal for his daughter. This wasn’t a passing fancy-she was going to be with Cynthia for the rest of her life. Once he came to that realization, he did what any good soldier would do-he sucked it up and he got the job done. He’d met Cynthia at what they both called the SDMZ, or the “Starbucks Demilitarized Zone,” and they agreed on an uneasy detente. They could hate each other all they wanted, and nothing could change that, but they agreed to be civil and to treat each other with respect. And over the years, in the process of being civil, he came to understand that Cynthia was a good kid-as far as bull dykes go, that is.
“Hi, Daddy!” Sharon’s voice, unchanged from the time she was five. Well, that was bullshit, and Dew knew it, but that’s exactly what his ears heard every time she talked.
“Hi, sugar. How are you?”
“I’m doing great. I’m so glad you called. How are you?”
“Tip-top. Couldn’t be better. Work is going well.”
“You’re still doing the desk job?” He heard the worry in her voice.
“They’re not making you go out in the field anymore, right?”
“Of course not, at my age? That would be crazy.”
“It most certainly would.”
“Listen, sugar, I only have a minute. I just wanted to call and hear your voice.”
“Well here it is. When are you coming to Boston again? I want to see you. We can go out, just you and me.”
Dew swallowed. If a gutted Malcolm Johnson wasn’t going to make him cry, he sure as shit wouldn’t let the waterworks go over a phone call with his daughter.
“Come on, sugar, you know I’m okay with Cynthia now. We’ll all go out, spend some time together.”
Dew almost laughed when he heard Sharon sniffle. Whereas he could hold back tears seemingly forever, she cried if the wind blew funny. “Yeah, I know, Daddy. And you have no idea what that means to me. What it means to us.”
“Stop with the crying already. I got to go. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.”
“Bye-bye, Daddy. And be careful. You might get a splinter from that desk.”
Dew hung up. He took one deep breath, and then the emotions faded away, pushed back to their normal hiding place. That was what he’d needed, to reconnect with the why of what he did. It was for her. It was for a country in which his daughter could live as she pleased, even if that meant living with another woman, even if her father hated it, and hated her mate, with all his heart. There were many places in the world where Sharon would have been killed-or worse-for doing what came naturally to her.
Was that cliche? To keep on fighting, and killing when need be, because America was the greatest nation on earth? Probably, but Dew didn’t care if the reasons were good, logical or even cliche. They were his reasons.
And that was enough.
30.
Margaret, Amos and Clarence Otto stood as Murray Longworth entered the commandeered office. Murray shook everyone’s hands, then all three sat. Murray, of course, sat behind the big desk.
“What have you got for me? We got you a relatively fresh one this time. I trust that an unrotted body gave us some clues as to what the hell these things are?”
Margaret led the charge. “It didn’t stay ‘unrotted’ for long. All the tissue is gone. Only his skeleton is left-it looks the same as the remains of Judy Washington and Charlotte Wilson. We have the liquefied remains, but I think we’ve learned all we can from that material. Before Brewbaker fully decomposed, however, we were able to gather some valuable and disturbing information. First of all, we believe the growth isn’t a modification of tissue, but rather it’s a parasitical organism.”
Murray’s face wrinkled in mild disgust. “It’s a parasite? What makes you think that?”
“Just as with Charlotte Wilson’s case, the growth itself was already decomposed. We could get nothing from it, but we found structures in the surrounding tissue that made us classify it as a parasite. The growths are tapped into the host’s circulatory system, drawing oxygen and possibly nutrients from the blood.”
Murray stared at her, like a limestone statue just beginning to show the effects of wind, rain and erosion. “What you’re telling me is that these triangular things are alive, that they’re not part of the victim but rather a separate, living creature?”
“Exactly.”
“So why are the ‘hosts,’ as you call them, going nuts?”
“We found excessive neurotransmitter levels in the brain,” Margaret said. “Neurotransmitters are the substances that pass signals from nerve cell to nerve cell, allowing the body to communicate with the brain and vice versa, as well as allowing the brain to function. Dopamine and serotonin, in particular, were at extremely high levels. Excess dopamine is implicated in severe schizophrenia, and excess serotonin can cause psychotic behavior and paranoia. We also found extremely high levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine throughout the brain. These two hormones are vital to the fight-or-flight response, key in reaction to emergencies and perceived threats. They
