I’m getting antsy just hanging around the base, too. Should be thankful, though. Signed up thinking I’d get to go kill towelheads in Iraq or Affuckistan or somewhere. Then they sent me out here to Arizona and I found out how much I hate the fucking desert. I’m sunburned half the time, sweating all the time. Iraq or Affuckistan or Ari-fucking-zona, they all suck. Maybe I’ll fake sick and see if I can get reassigned.
I do twenty reps while the bitch ties my record. She sits up for a moment, shoots me a wink, and gives Gus a look and a nod. “No way,” he grins.
“Do it,” she says. She’s sweating and grinning like a bitch in heat. “Two more.”
The squad hollers. Sergeant Kennedy’s going to do nine-forty. She’s going to beat me. Fucking bitch cunt whore.
Gus and Monroe are scrounging up two more seventy-five pound plates across the gym when Ryan Polk comes in. He’s working as one of Colonel Shelly’s staff when he’s not here with the rest of us. Let him make corporal. “News from the outside,” he says as he pulls off his jacket. “It’s getting worse.”
Nobody has to ask what. About four weeks ago, in mid-March, we started hearing news stories about an epidemic. First couple cases were in Los Angeles, but then we heard about outbreaks in Vegas and New York and Boston. There was a news story about someone getting sick in London and then Colonel Shelly clamped down on all of it. That told us how bad it was. One of the MPs told me they clamp down on big bad news so no one does anything stupid and runs home or something.
The other bitch, Britney, goes up to him. Yeah, we’ve got a fucking cunt soldier named Britney in our squad. “What’d you hear?”
Ryan grabs a set of free weights and starts doing curls, too. Our muscles get stiff fast if we don’t keep using them. “I heard Colonel Shelly say they’re deploying the National Guard in nineteen cities,” he says. “They’re talking about martial law.”
I can’t believe that. Not here in the U.S. of A. “No fucking way,” I say.
“That’s what they were saying. It hasn’t happened yet but they think they’re going to have to.”
“Does the Guard even have that many people left in country?” asks Eddie. “Most of them are in Iraq, aren’t they?”
Ryan shrugs in between curls.
Kennedy wipes some sweat off her forehead. “Is it getting that bad? Are people looting or something?”
Gus slaps his plate on the bar and shakes his head. “I heard it’s not like a regular flu, whatever it is. People get sick but they keep walking around and infecting people.”
Monroe taps his plate into place. “I heard it was turning people into zombies.”
“Fuck that,” I say. “That’s bullshit.”
“My brother’s in Queens. He says he’s seen people wandering around biting other people.”
Kennedy leans back on the bench. “Hate to agree with Taylor,” she says, “but that sounds like bullshit.” She grabs the bar and takes in a few deep breaths. Her arms tighten and the bar comes off the stands. Nine-forty. Fucking cunt.
“What I want to know,” says Eddie, “is why aren’t they sending us out?”
“Because we’re not in the National Guard,” I say.
“Yeah, fuck that. If they’re locking down the base it means things are bad. People need help out there and it sounds like they need everyone they can get.”
“You want to go haul that flu virus off to Guantanamo?” says Britney with a grin.
“I don’t like sitting here on my ass,” Eddie tells her.
“Yeah, your ass looks well sat-on,” grunts Kennedy between presses. Most of them chuckle. She’s telling jokes. The bitch is telling jokes while she breaks my record. I want to throw one of my dumbbells at her head and see what happens.
It gets the attention back on her, which is what she wanted. Seven reps. Eight. Nine. Ten. Ten reps of nine-hundred and forty pounds. The bar clangs onto the stand and almost bounces off before Gus grabs it.
They’re all pounding her back and congratulating her. She’s got wide eyes. Runner’s high. I drop the dumbbells back on the rack with a clang. It’s my turn. Time to get my record back and—
And she flops back onto the bench. She’s staring up at the bar, and I swear to fucking God if she says what I think she’s going to say I will kill this bitch.
“Do it,” she says. “Two more.”
Fucking cocksucker bitch cunt whore!
They all stop talking and stare at her. It already looks like a cartoon barbell, there’s so much weight on it. There’s about three inches clear at either end. Just enough to fit one more plate.
“Sarge,” says Monroe, “you sure? That’s—”
“One thousand ninety,” she says. She nods. “Sorensen says we should be able to break a thousand. So let’s break it.”
There’s another moment of quiet and then they’re all hollering and stomping. Kennedy the she-bitch is still staring at the bar. Gus and Monroe trek across the gym, grab the last seventy-five pound plates, and lug them back across the gym. One plate is nothing to any of us these days. They’re carrying them one-handed. She’s got seven on each side of the bar now.