John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Need a Break

He considered for a minute, the muttered something under his breath that sounded like “she-devil.” I laughed and told him not to let her hear him say that, either. Then again, maybe she would take it as a compliment.

“Here on post, Universal Code of Military Justice is applied but it’s not like the old one. They changed it two years ago to allow corporal punishment. Two senior noncoms and a junior officer are allowed to decide punishment for a variety of charges if the soldier is found guilty by a majority of NCOs in his unit by secret ballot. Charges are read, evidence given, guilt decided and punishment administered the same day. The ones who decide the punishment can never be from the convicted unit. I got called in to sit on a punishment enforcement.”

“What did this soldier do?”

“Two of them. One for theft. Broke into a bunch of lockers at night, went through people’s wallets stealing new dollars. He was found guilty. Another NCO, a drill sergeant, was found guilty of aggravated sexual harassment.”

I changed into my dress blues and walked over to the table set up in the Company Orderly Room. A 2 ndlieutenant and a master sergeant were already sitting, going over the case notes. I introduced myself and then asked them what we had.

“OK, well, the private was found guilty of theft, breaking into soldiers’ lockers at night while he was on Firewatch. Someone caught him in the act.”

“So, no other witnesses? That’s a tough one, one person’s word against another.”

“No, we have a witness. The whole thing was caught on a monitor. That and the soldier that caught him beat the crap out of him with a garbage can when he tried to run for it. Dumbass.”

“Easy enough, then. Twenty lashes, reduction in rank, cut off of rations.” Every soldier in the military was given an extra allowance of ration cards to send home to his family. It was a way of keeping them happy, knowing they were doing something to help out their families, and provided them an extra enlistment bonus. Cutting them off would bring shame to his whole family, which was often more effective than physical punishment.

“Agreed. Now, about the drill sergeant. This is his second time, but there was no proof the first time, or not enough, anyway. This time he was stupid enough to try his crap in front of two females. Actually put his hand on one of them, squeezed her ass. They reported him right away.”

“He’s gotta go” said the Master Sergeant.

I nodded my head. “Agreed. No room for that. We need every single gun we can get, and this tool is going to ruin unit effectiveness and cohesion.” I never understood that. You always got further with a woman by showing them respect than trying the old one out of a hundred likes it, so I’ll try grab-ass on a hundred and one women .

“OK,” said the LT. He turned to the first sergeant of the Basic Training Company, who had been standing by. “Top, have the company fall in to witness punishment.”

Outside was one of those constant drizzling rains that always seem to be happening at Ft. Lewis. The entire basic training company, some two hundred soldiers, had assembled in a box formation around a concrete pillar set in the pavement.

The first soldier was walked over to the post, had his cuffs attached to the post, and his platoon sergeant gave him a quick twenty lashes to a measured drum beat. Though we NCOs have the power once again to administer punishment, it has to be us who give it. After the tenth strike of the whip, blood started to run down the private’s back, but I’ll give him credit, the kid didn’t scream once. He would either turn into a great soldier or be out of the Army soon enough. Nobody likes a thief. He would be held back until his wounds had healed and he could be recycled into another class.

Next, the drill sergeant was brought out. He stood in front of the entire company and I walked over to him. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. No combat patch on his sleeve, no Combat Action Badge. I wondered where he had been hiding out the last two years.

“Sergeant Dwayne Owens, you have been found guilty of three counts of aggravated sexual harassment by a group of your peers, and you are a disgrace to the NCO Corps. Your punishment is to be the following.” At this, I reached out and removed his drill sergeant hat from his head and handed it to the Master Sergeant who stood next to me.

“You are hereby discharged from the Military Forces of the United States of America. Your service record will be sealed, and you will be barred from serving in any of said military forces. These soldiers are entrusted to your care and development, and you have betrayed that trust. In addition, your file will be marked for any future employer as discharged for sexual offense.”

As I spoke, I used my knife to cut off his rank and unit patches and let them fall to the floor.

“Mister Owens, you have one hour to leave this military installation. You will be provided transportation back to your home of record.”

I hated it, but it had to be done. It was one thing to mutually joke and smoke with female soldiers of equal rank out in the field. It was a whole other thing to be in a basic training environment and use your authority to take advantage of impressionable young women who were scared of that authority.

The first sergeant uncuffed him, and he walked away, head hanging down, in the direction of the Headquarters Building. The entire company watched him go. Not a few of the female soldiers had a smile on their faces.

While I was on my way back to the billets to meet up with the rest of the team and plan our way out of JBLM and Dr. Morano’s reach, my phone rang again. It was Doc.

“Listen up, Nick. We got orders for the entire team to fly out to Denver and join in the big push that III Corps has on, trying to take back the Denver metro area.”

“What the hell, that’s a straight-up Mech Infantry push! What use would we be there?” Then I thought back to what Morano said to us in the lab. Have a nice vacation in Denver, she had said.

“I know, but it does get us out of here. Either way, orders are orders.”

We rode a troop train out of Seattle, headed for the front lines outside of Denver. Like all soldiers, we slept, played cards, got bored. I used the time to get to know our newest guy, Specialist Esposito.

“Not what you were expecting, was it? Heading to the front lines.”

“I’m getting out of the office, that’s all I give a crap about. I was turning into a zombie myself, doing admin shit all day. I spent half the time trying to get my stupid CAC reader to work. I mean, really, who is going to try to hack our networks now?”

“Nobody, but you know how the Army is. Once something is in place, it will never be taken away, only added to.” He seemed like a decent guy, and it would help that he had combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Different fight, but experience was experience. We did the usual “where were you in `09, what FOB were you at, did you know so-and-so.” It was military guys’ way of sniffing each other’s butts, like two strange dogs getting to know each other.

As the train clattered over the mountains of Idaho and Wyoming, I thought about our problem with Dr. Morano. One way or another, I was glad to be out of her immediate reach. Payback would have to come, and it would be a showdown to the end. You can’t leave enemies like that, ones who were willing to kill without conscience, alive and able to strike at you. We would have to be very careful, though. This wasn’t some jumped-up jackass of an officer who had it coming and nobody around him cared less. I had read about some of her research and she was a big shot, a favorite of the powers that be. The fact we were on our way to the front lines was proof enough of that.