“There’s a reason I call her Soccer-Momasaurus,” Janea said, laughing.
“It’s Mrs. Everette, right?” Sergeant Major Attie asked with a tone of slight disappointment.
“Yes, Master Sergeant,” Barb said, shaking her head. “And I note you’re wearing a wedding ring.”
“I’ll go Muslim.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“On the road again,” Janea sang, loudly and deliberately off-key. “Ah cain’t wait to git on the road ag’in!”
She was dragging herself through liquid mud that just barely didn’t cover her nose and mouth, by pulling at cracks on the ceiling of the cave.
“Janea,” Barb said, sucking in her breath to get through a tight spot. “Sound carries in caves.”
“Yep,” Janea said. “And the sooner we run into these things and kill a bunch of them, the faster we can get out of here. I’m getting really tired of mud. And my stylist is going to kill me for what I’m doing to my hair.”
“How you doing, Sergeant Struletz?” Barb said. She started to shake her head at Janea’s reply and almost got a mouth full of mud. Not that it would have mattered much. Her face was already completely covered.
“Great, ma’am,” the sergeant replied. “Loving every minute of it.”
“You sound serious,” Janea said, amazed.
“I am on a mission to destroy evil in God’s name, ma’am,” the sergeant said, happily. “And I’m in a cave. I’m good.”
“Randell?”
“What was it you said?” Randell replied. “Oh, yeah. Nominal.” He started laughing so hard he got stuck.
“What’s so funny?” Master Sergeant Attie asked.
“So, last night,” Randell said. “That was just last night, right?”
“Yeah,” Janea said. “That was just last night. Trust me.”
“So Mrs. Everette and Miz Grisham are staking out the cave the Old Ones used to attack the house,” Randell said. “They figured the one that attacked the Boones might come back.”
“Might have been,” Barb said. “We’ll have to wait for Stan to sort out the genetics.”
“If he doesn’t go mad first,” Janea said, chuckling.
“So Graham would call up there every fifteen minutes for a commo check,” Randell said. “‘Cave One, status?’ And Mrs. Everette would reply in this dry, I’m-An-Astronaut voice: ‘Nominal.’”
“It’s not funny,” Barb said.
“That was right up until a bit after one AM,” Randell said, chuckling. “When all of a sudden there’s this ‘ GRAHAAAM! ’”
“Well, what were there?” Barb asked. “Twenty of them? And who killed most of them?”
“Oh, yes,” Randell said, sarcastically. “The glorious power of the Lord God Almighty did save the day.” He ended the litany in a very thick Southern accent. Which sounded natural.
“Well, it did,” Janea said, cocking her head around to look back at him. “I mean, I may not worship the White God, but I recognize His power. I just think most of His Scriptures are poppycock. No offense, Barb.”
“None taken,” Barb said. “When it comes right down to it, most of the Old Testament is to fill out page count. People forget that. The essence of Christianity is only to be found in the words of Jesus Christ. And it all comes down to His definition of His Father: God is love. Everything else is padding. I enjoy going to Episcopalian worship. I like the pomp and pageantry and I enjoy a good sermon. But the truth is, whenever two or more are gathered in His Name, there is God. Heck, just Jordan and I count for that. You with me, Jordan?”
“Two or more are gathered in His Name, ma’am,” Jordan said. “Still wish we had a priest with us.”
“Priest, schmiest,” Randell said. “I’m glad the master sergeant turned up these guns.”
“What is with you and religion, Randell?” Janea asked.
“You picked now to ask?”
“I’m trying to take my mind off of sliding through muck,” Janea admitted.
“Look, I saw what Mrs. Everette did,” Randell said. “I get it. She’s got a special relationship with God. I don’t. I don’t want one. I’ve seen what a ‘special relationship with God’ gets you in the end, and I don’t like it.”
“Gets you in the end?” Barb asked, curious.
“Can we drop it?” Randell asked.
“Sure,” Janea said. “To each her religion. Or lack thereof, as the case may be.”
“I did four tours in Iraq,” Randell said after a few minutes of silence.
“I’ve done…seven?” Attie said. “You sort of lose count. More in the Rockpile.”
“I grew up in a small town,” Randell said, ignoring the master sergeant’s interjection. “Pretty similar to Goin, except in Kentucky. They’re all pretty much the same.”
“They’re the same all over,” Barb said. “Choose a country.”
“I was raised Baptist,” Randell said. “ Primitive Baptist, which is about as fundamental as you can get.”
“That’s pretty much out there,” Barb admitted. “I know some. Basically good people, but…‘You can’t point a person into heaven’ doesn’t seem to compute.”
“But that was what I saw as religion,” Randell said. “And don’t get me wrong. I believed. I knew that God had his eye on me every single second and that there was black and white. And everyone that thought like me was right and everyone that didn’t was evil. Homos deserved to be killed, screwing was total sin, hell was just the other side of dancing.”
“I had a similar upbringing,” Janea said.
“ Really?” Barb asked.
“Sort of,” Janea said. “My parents went to a similar church. Their actual expressions of faith pretty much stopped there.”
“Thing is, I believed,” Randell said, angrily. “I believed that God had a plan and a set of rules, and I had to live by them and everybody else did, too.”
“And?” Barb asked.
“And when I got out of high school, I had a classic education in fundamentalist doctrine, not much in the way of learning and not a job to be found.”
“So you joined the Army,” Attie said. “You’re not a stranger in that.”
“So I joined the Army,” Randell said. “Mostly for the college but also because, well…from my perspective, back then, this is a religious war. The kid I was then was perfectly comfortable with burning the whole Moslem world if they didn’t understand that Christianity was the only way. Don’t ask what I thought of Jews.”
“They killed Jesus,” Janea said. “Pretty much what most fundamentalist Moslems think, at a guess.”
“Buddy of mine in high school had a T-shirt,” Randell said. “‘Say what you like about Hitler, he killed a lot of Jews.’ We all thought it was a hoot. Not that he could ever wear it in public, even in our town.”
“Every religion has idiot fanatics,” Barb said.
“Yeah,” Randell said. “But we knew we were right. Then I went to Iraq.”
“You keep saying that,” Janea said.
“First tour was okay,” Randell said, ignoring her. “I mean, it wasn’t fun, but it was. I was killing hajis. I was doing God’s work. Just like Jordan is now.”
“A little different, I think,” Jordan protested.
“Not the way I thought,” Randell said. “Second and third was more of the same, just more boring. First one was in Fallujah.”
“Ouch,” Attie said. “That’s one hell of a first deployment.”
“Like I said, I enjoyed it,” Randell said. “By the fourth I was a junior sergeant, but I had three previous tours under my belt. And we had a different mission. More time with ISF-Iraqi Security Forces.”
“Thank you, Petraeus,” Attie said, fervently. “ Finally a guy who understood Counter-Insurgency.”
“I got detailed to work with an ISF company,” Randell said. “Liaison for support and training. We were working near Ramadi…”
Nobody asked a question. Finally he continued.
