Джон Ринго - The Last Centurion

Body mass. He wanted his clerks to compile all the weights of the guys in the unit and issue water based on that. Potentially with each "aqueous packet" being detailed to individuals.

Dude, I'm a big lad. There was one of my troops when I had that platoon on the first deployment who was a fucking shrimp. Barely over minimum height and they had him on the weight control program to get his weight up . Drank about three times as much as me. I didn't get heat stroke, he didn't die of dihydrogenmonoxide poisoning.

Two bottles per head, four bottles per head, six bits a dollar. I don't give a rat's ass. Pass the fucking water out and let's be DONE.

Speaking of not being able to let it go.

The point is, what had been a two to three hour meeting now had to be scheduled for most of the fucking day. And I'm not talking about starting after 0900. I'm talking about from "cain see to cain't see."

It was late afternoon. We'd eaten MREs in the meeting for lunch. My tummy was rumbling. I wanted nothing more than to go back to my hooch, put in my iPod and wash this day out of my brain.

And it got up to the battalion surgeon's presentation.

The guy practically sprang to his feet. I'd noticed he looked as if he had to piss his pants all day long. Usually he sort of checked out like the rest of us. But he'd been practically bouncing in his chair, like, all fucking day . When the XO pointed to him he bounced up like a fucking land-mine. I actually tried to pay attention.

"We've got an important directive from the Chief of Staff," he said.

"The Med Branch chief of staff?" the CO asked.

"No, sir," the captain said. "It was sent through Med Branch from the Chief of Staff of the Army. The Chief of Staff's portion is two lines. I'd like to read it and then expand."

"Go," the colonel said pompously.

" 'Indicators indicate significant outbreak of Human-to-Human transmission of H5N1 virus in China Operational Zone. Begin immediate Type Two immunization procedures for all DOD and affiliated personnel in your AOC upon receipt of vaccines. End.' "

H-Five-N- Motherfucking -One. I snorted and went back to sleeping with my eyes open.

Th-th-th-that's right, people. I got two months advanced warning of what was about to occur. With both the Great Cold and the motherfucking Plague. Two. Months.

And I went back to sleeping with my eyes open.

Okay, here's a few of the things going on here. Item the first: The Battalion Surgeon.

Now, the guy had a set of brass ones. I knew that, intellectually. We'd been over there long enough, and soaked up enough casualties, that he'd been out there with his teams keeping them alive. The line commanders thought he walked on water. If I'd been a line commander I probably would have thought he walked on water.

But.

The guy was just a geek. Look, I never beat up the geeks in school, not even when I was a kid, and I tried to stop it when I got to where people listened to me. But that didn't mean we were pals. Some of them thought we were because I stopped it. They were like the adjutant, I swear. Bottomline: I don't talk geek; they don't talk me. I can pick up most of what they say. I'm not stupid. I just don't get off on what they get off on.

And the battalion surgeon was the geek's geek. Rumpled uniform, glasses, pens sticking out any which way, that geek scrunch. Social skills? The guy couldn't get laid in a Bangkok brothel if he was holding a billion dollars in small bills. Balls the size of the great pyramids, total fucking Grade-A-Number-One geek.

He flapped his hands when he talked. I don't mean used his hands to talk. When he got excited, which was often if he wasn't cutting on somebody, he held both hands out bent inwards at chest height and flapped them like he was trying to take off.

Geek.

I tuned him out. It was that or grab his extremely good surgeon's hands and rip them off at the wrists. It drove me fucking nuts.

I did, however, check back in when he said "Experimental polycoat serum . . . "

Wait, what was that? Back up . . . retrieving voice file . . .processing . . .

"Wait," I said, sitting up. "They're not using us for guinea pigs again ?"

"Yes, it is experimental . . ." the surgeon said.

"Oh, no," I replied. "No fucking way. Anybody recall the studies on the anthrax cases? I don't want to have Alzheimers at forty. Besides, most flu vaccines don't even work !"

"It's an order, Captain," the CO said, angrily. "And you will carry it out."

"May I explain, sir?" the PA asked.

Now, the physician's assistant was a Warrant Officer Three. He was new to the battalion, but he had all the right merit badges. He'd been a medic before going to Mister and got his combat medic's badge. He spoke the language of the grunt. He was asking the CO but I knew he was asking me as well.

I let the CO nod. Hell, he thought it was his battalion, why not?

"Getting the Type Two polycoat immunization serum, if we do get it, is a very good thing, sir," Warrant Lomen said. "H5N1 is a slippery sucker if you don't mind my putting it that way. The standard serum attacks binding sites. H5N1 has been shown to have mutated binding proteins. What that means, sir, is that some variants of H5N1 may be resistant to the standard immunization. The Type Two is actually a broad-spectrum flu vaccine that detects flu protein coats across almost the full spectrum, possibly the entire spectrum, of flu viruses. Thus the mutated binding sites become unimportant. What that means is that we're more protected. Yes, it's experimental. I've seen the raw reports on it and they all look quite clean. I wish they'd fast-tracked it; as it is most civilians won't be getting it and that could mean significant public health issues."

("Significant public health issues" I'm putting that down for the classic, all time, there is nothing to top it, understatement of all time. I know I repeated all time. How many of you dis agree?)

"Bandit Six, I take it that resolves your issues?" the CO said.

"Mitigates, sir," I replied. "But it's going to be hell to sell to the troops. I still don't like it."

That's right people, we got the good stuff. We got it two months before the Great Outbreak. And I was bitching about it. I was BITCHING about it.

Fuck.

Fuck that person. Me I mean. The person I was then. The lame-brain fucking maroon I was then. That know-it-all, I can lick the world person. Even now, thinking back, I just want to fucking cry.

The only important part of the meeting, which I mostly still tuned out, continued when Bravo spoke up.

"Is there any supplementary information besides the Chief of Staff's order?"

Bravo had been one of my JOs and, thus, was a good guy. Otherwise he'd never have gotten a company. I did not let cock-ups get ahead. It also meant he was not one of the BC's ass-buddies like Alpha. But it was a germane question.

"There's a WHO bulletin indicating a possible human-to-human outbreak in Western China," the WO said. "But that's all we've got and it's currently unconfirmed. CDC has not issued a warning."

Look, I'm not sure who all is going to read this. So I'm probably going to be covering stuff that most of my readers know. Little kids (sorry about the language) might not be as up on it. Hell, maybe nobody will read it, but I feel like I need to include stuff that about anybody knows. Like the story of Jungbao and how people viewed flus in those days.

Hardly anybody knew much about the World Health Organization in those days. I sure as hell didn't give a rat's ass about them. The WHO was just another nongovernmental organization that occasionally got in the way of soldiers doing their jobs. I didn't see, didn't care about, the WHO reporters in foreign lands. Or that their job was to be soldiers on the front lines of the battle against disease. Disease was licked. That was most people's attitude. Sure, some people had gotten scared into a frenzy over this "bird flu" thing. But they were just the usual sort of "I'm afraid of everything" idiots. That's what most of us thought. You got the flu, you felt sick for a couple of days and you got better. Flu didn't kill anyone.