This is part 4 of an ongoing serial story.  See my Introduction / FAQ for details.

Part 1 (vs. the Tooth Fairy), Segment 4:

My Sargent in Utah once said, “ If life gives you lemons, be really really suspicious. Hell, nobody is going around giving anyone free fruit these days. If you got yourself some free lemons, shoot the three nearest people and make a run for it. The lemons are probably grenades.”

Thinking back, he may have been a little paranoid. Then again, he was one of the few people in my unit to have made it out of Provo alive. As with any other organization, the US Army had good leaders and bad leaders. Sgt. Hooper was a good leader if you wanted to stay alive, maybe so so much if you wanted to attain mission objectives. None of us ever complained. In the end, most of his troops were no so concerned with what country Utah should be in. We never had a real use for it In the first place.

I'd been in their spot before, OK not exactly. I had been in a supply convoy that the separatists had tried to hijack just outside of Provo. We were loaded down with food and supplies fro a forward base none of us were too keen on arriving at. We were all screwed a lot of ways. Our trucks were not bulletproof, let alone rocket proof... so we hadn't wanted to fight. The people pointing guns at us wanted our supplies, so they really didn't want to blow us up.

Gunfire was not a great choice for them either. The US Army convoy was full of misfits and malcontents shifted from other units. Most of us would have gladly sold Benny Fergus to anyone that would have given us a dollar for him. All of our friends were someplace else, so mostly we were looking out for our own asses rather than each other's. Looking back, a lot of the guys on that convoy probably had done some pretty shitty things to other people to get there.

I... I had removed a Captain's kidney for a transplant to help out this other guy I knew. Now the Capitan didn't know he was donating a kidney. He thought he was having his appendix out. It would have worked out, if he hadn't remembered.... about a week later, that he had his appendix taken out as a kid. I hadn't been able to convince him that it could grow back, but I had been able to convince him that everyone would find out what had happened if he had me court marshaled. So I got sent out to the forward fire base. It was better than getting hanged.

The separatists, on the other hand, tended to travel and fight in extended family groups (some of them huge). It was a lot harder for them to risk members of their families on obviously dangerous fighting. (it can be hard to explain to your general, Aunt Bertha, that her Favorite Nephew got whacked when stupid cousin Kenny made it out alive. Most of their suicide bombers tended to be people whose families had been killed in a mortar strike or an Air Force bombing. Sgt. Hooper would have send every single one of us out to die if it meant he would get to go home.

So we were vaguely ready for some of us to die for stuff we didn't care about, but mainly to survive the attack. While they were not really willing to die to get stuff they really wanted. Valley Forge it wasn't.

Eventually Sgt. Hooper negotiated a deal. We traded all the supplies for a giant pile of ammo and drove out of there as fast as we could. Rumor had it that when an officer asked Sgt. Hooper what had happened to the supplies, he had shot the man twice in the foot and said, “T I doubled our ammo, that's what.”

Over the next several days, the bullets turned out to have been far more useful than drums of government peanut butter would have been. Someone, maybe Wilkins, told me that Sgt. Hooper stole a truck and made it to Canada right about then. I'd believe it. He's probably up there fishing for moose, or whatever they do.

Someone like Sgt. Hooper certainly wasn't in this APC. These guys had no idea what they were doing. Everything seemed to be a voting issue, and I began to suspect that they may have been deserters. Considering the pasting that their compatriots were getting a half-mile down the street, I suspect nobody in the entire attack were veterans of Utah. The generals might have been, for as much as they probably learned from it.

Life had given the guys in the APC lemons... in the form of this poorly planned invasion. Somehow, these guys had made it out. They had found what they thought was a couple of nice easy targets to bully, what they really got was Sgt. Hooper's grenade. Now that they were short of a machine gun, they had 2 options. The US Army could drive away in embarrassment, or get out of the APC and shoot try to shoot us.

Considering the guy that had just tore the machine gun off their ride was still standing outside... and might become angry at them for the lack of cheese, I could see why they might be having a hard time choosing the best course of action. At least I didn't have to keep my hands behind my head anymore.

The Badger stood nearby, yield sign in one hand, the dismembered machine gun in the other as if they were a fork and a knife. He was obviously still hopeful for cheese to be produced at some point soon. He had the head cocked in the almost classic appearance of a dog waiting for a treat.

“Cheese please!” he cried, almost begging.

Slowly one of the hatches undogged, ground slowly open and a small hand periscope appeared in the gap. It spun quickly around, focusing briefly on me and then for almost a minute on The Badger. The whole time clunking, banging and whispering could be heard from inside. More voting was taking place. Suddenly the hatch heaved open just long enough for a score small brown boxes and bags to rain at The Badger's feet like the APC was some kind of army food slot machine... and The Badger had come up all lemons. Th hatch slammed shut with a BANG, and the sound of furious locking.

The huge man's face lit up with glee as he dropped his weapons so he could scoop up the boxes. “Yummy, yummy cheese! Ooooooooooohhhh, with Army mans shaped macaronis too. Doc!” he turned to me, his arms trying to cradle all the boxes at once. “These are the nicest Army Mans I have never killed, yet!”

The APC driver ground a few gears and the vehicle nearly spun out on the sand covered street. Sheets of grit spraying all over me and The Badger. I doubted that it would ruin the US army field rations. The six-wheeled vehicle regained course and hauled ass up the street, only to miss a corner and embed itself halfway into a three story apartment building with a resounding crash and the grind of crushed masonry.

Small amounts of smoke began to leak around the edges of the crashed vehicle, but the building didn't seem to be on fire. Four soldiers stumbled out of various hatches and tried to stagger away from the wreck with their weapons and suspiciously overstuffed duffel bags. I guess a little looting would go a long way, considering what they were probably getting paid to get their asses shot off here. They shuffled away under their loads, pausing only to award The Badger nervous glances and to shoot me little embarrassed “oops, sorry”grins.

I turned back to my erstwhile companion who was pouring fluorescent orange cheese powder into his mouth. This had not been the best of days.

“Wn'some?” He coughed a small cloud of dust and held out a small packet in his huge hand.

“No, all yours pal. You deserve it. Good job. Eat up.” I said almost mechanically.

Eddie chose this as the best opportunity to appear at our location. At some point he had taken off his jacket, and was now wearing a plaid flannel shirt and a ball cap for the short lived Providence Penetrators ball club. Their little bullet mascot winked at me and gave me the finger in a short animation loop. He quickly absorbed the scene and growled at me.

“Ok, the cheese powder I can understand... no I can't, but story will probably make sense... kind of... Look I'm gonna want you to explain what the hell happened here... Really though, did you have to make them crash into MY building?”

The Badger just shrugged and began to chomp down little soldier shaped macaroni by the hand full ,as if he did it every day.

 ***

As always, this work is (c) 2009 T.J. Whitfield Jr.