Danny remembered standing in the chow line on his first cruise out. He had been lost a half dozen times already, and the lower ranking petty officers seemed to delight in sending him on wild goose chases, getting him even more lost. When it was time for chow, he stood in line, starving, he couldn"t ever remember being that hungry before, and then out of nowhere it seemed, came the snipes.
Covered head to toe in black oil, those sweating men with white circles around their eyes walked into the chow hall and the place went silent. The line parted automatically. Danny stepped away from the food and let these men, these enginemen, these sailors who never saw the light of day and worked in 120 degree oil all day every day, from eight until late, eat first.
He kicked at the wardroom wall.
There had never been a snipe in here. Officers were too pure to hang out with those who beat their brains out making their ship run. Making them look good.
Danny had never been in officer country before, and a.s.sumed it was palatial. Of course it couldn"t be, it was still a fairly small ship, but they kept it shrouded in so much mystery, they kept the division between officer and enlisted such a vast abyss ... and yet the officers were really no different than anybody else. Most times they were less intelligent, they were more p.r.o.ne to f.u.c.kups than the seamen.
But would they ever admit it? h.e.l.l, no.
"Danny..."
"Stop whining!" His voice resonated nicely in officer country. He sounded like an officer here. He could have been one. He should have been one.
"Danny, I"m cold. I want to go back."
He clicked out the light.
"I"m cold," he mocked her. "I want to go back."
She made a tiny girlish noise of worry.
"You"re a sailor now," he said. "Your country and your shipmates and the safety of this vessel depend upon you. There is no going back."
"Danny..."
"Dismissed."
"Turn the light back on. Please."
"No whining. Stop your whining or I"ll write you up. Article fifteen. You"ll go to Captain"s mast."
"You"re scaring me."
"You"ll get sent to the brig. Bread and water. Or better yet, the Big Chicken Dinner. You know what that is, don"t you? Bad Conduct Discharge. BCD. We call it the Big Chicken Dinner around here."
"Danny..."
"Get out of here," he said, tired of her.
"I don"t know where I am. This place is so confusing."
A long groan shimmied the length of the ship; the weary complaint of a dying behemoth.
Danny smiled. "I"m going to sink this f.u.c.ker," he said, and took off out the door, leaving the whiner behind.
He went to another place he"d never been on this ship: the engine room.
The machinery had been cannibalized. What was left looked incomplete, pipes and ducts reaching dramatically to nowhere, holes in the catwalk grid where something ought to be, but vacancy lived there instead.
The dripping was louder down here.
Danny shone his light down into the bilges. They were full of oily water. It stunk of diesel fuel. Oh, no you don"t, you wily b.i.t.c.h, he said to the ship, and his voice echoed and sounded tiny. These fumes would blow me up along with you.
He could punch a hole in any part of the ship, as long as it was below the waterline. The weight of the incoming water would settle the ship lower and lower, until the G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing finally sank. It wasn"t going to take a very big hole, either. And Danny was in no hurry.
He left the engine rooma"it was too vast, too creepy, too dangerous, and chose the Chief"s quarters instead. That was fitting. It would be that G.o.dd.a.m.ned Master Chief Watts who would have had a fit over a hole in the hull. Well, Danny thought, let him have a fit over this one.
Holding the maglight in his mouth, he opened his backpack and pulled out all the newspaper wadding he"d put in there for protection. The battery, the wires, the small wad of plastique. He"d been pinching plastique from his job site, one pea-sized piece at a time until he had a wad the size of a golf ball. That should do the trick. The ship was steel plate, but it was old. Stressed. Rusted. Barnacled. This should make a nice, tidy little hole.
Danny fixed the wad on the cold, perspiring hull next to a rib, stuck a blasting cap in it, then ran the wires back to the battery. He"d seen enough explosions to know that this was going to cause some major damage, and it would be immediate. Shrapnel would fly, water would pour in through the hole, he"d have to get his a.s.s out of Dodge, and he"d have to do it in a hurry.
Still holding the flashlight in his teeth, he fixed one wire to a battery terminal, then careful to hold the other wire far away from it, he stood up and played out the wire. He"d touch this sucker off from two compartments down the pa.s.sageway. The explosion would happen under watera"at the most, it would be a loud burp at the surface. By the time the patrol came around in the morning, they"d just find an empty parking spot in the row of mothballed ships.
He grinned at the thought of it, and saliva dripped down his chin. He rubbed his chin on the shoulder of his shirt, but that knocked the flashlight c.o.c.keyed. In working his lips to right it, it fell out of his mouth, gla.s.s shattered, and everything went dark.
"s.h.i.t."
"No kidding," the girl said, then slammed the compartment door.
Danny dove for it, and before she had a chance to turn the rusty dogs down to lock him in, he had the door open and a fistful of her shoulder. He threw her into the compartment, stepped out into the pa.s.sageway and dogged the door down.
He stood sweating in the dark dampness, listening to her yell and beat ineffective fists against the thick metal door. She was locked in the dark room, not a good place to be, but better her than him. b.i.t.c.h.
This put an end to his plans of sinking the G.o.dd.a.m.ned ship. Maybe it was just as well. Maybe he"d wait until they were both just a little bit calmer, then he"d open the door and they"d get back into the rowboat, he"d take her home and they"d never have to look at each other again.
THE GIRL PUSHED against the door with all her weight, but it didn"t budge. She knew when she was had. She was locked in tight.
Danny had been fairly easy to find, making all kinds of racket, talking to himself, with the little beam of light flashing all around the place. She"d followed him as best as she could, she even kind of started to get the hang of this place, even in the dark.
Then she saw that he was planning to blow them up.
No way.
In fact, she better disarm that mother right now.
She put her hands out in front of her and walked slowly toward the wall where Danny had squeezed the plastique into a crevice behind the support rib.
But one tennis shoe stepped on the end of the wire the same time the other tennis shoe kicked over the battery. The terminal hit the salty metal floor just inches away from the end of the wire.
Closed circuit.
THE BLAST BLEW the hole in the side of the ship and it also bent up the bottom of the door to Master Chief Watts" quarters. Danny had only closed one of the six dogs, enough to keep out one skinny little girl, but not enough to keep out the ocean. And it poured in, flooding the ship so fast he barely had time to get out of its way.
Jesus Christ, Danny thought, and began running. The floor slipped and tilted alarmingly right under his feet. The ship was taking on tons of water and it was doing it right fast. He had to get up and get out.
He ran up a ladder but the hatch at the top was welded shut. He backed down, and then had to slog through knee-high water to the next ladder. He made it through the next door, closed it, dogged it, and that bought him a minute or two while he tried a different hatch.
Found one.
Up the ladder.
Locked.
The ship groaned and metal screeched as the old destroyer settled lower in the water, turning onto her side. Danny slipped and slid around, trying to get a grip on the walls, trying desperately to find a way up and out.
"Should have dogged the door properly, Seaman Richards," Master Chief Watts said.
"I meant to," Danny said, "I just didn"t think..."
"You didn"t think," the Master Chief said. "You never think. You"re a poor G.o.dd.a.m.ned excuse for a sailor. The worst I"ve seen."
"We"re sinking!" Danny yelled.
"Your shipmates will all die and it"s your fault," the Master Chief said. How many times have I told you that you can"t fool the ship?
Danny pushed past him, but his shoes slipped off the bulkhead and the surface of the water closed over his head. He pushed off and came up, gasping, swimming desperately against the current, looking for a way out, his heart pounding, his eyes bulging in the dark, feeling his way along, finding it harder and harder to breathe...
Draft. He felt a draft.
He tried to calm his nerves long enough to ignore the roar of the water and the screech of wrenching metal. He closed his eyes, held his breath and tried to gauge the direction of the breeze.
Left.
He turned and swam with all the stamina he had left, making for the opening. Where there was airflow, there was a way out.
Please G.o.d, a way out, and not just an air vent.
It was a hatch, rusted partway open. Danny stuck an arm through, put his foot on the ladder and heaved. The rusted hinge gave a little, but not enough. Water caught up with him, the current raging around his torso. He took a deep breath and hoped that he wouldn"t burst a blood vessel with the attempt. He saw red globes in front of his eyes as he grit his teeth and shoved on that rusted hatch with all the strength in his legs and his back, and it gave just a little more. Enough more. Danny made himself as thin as he could and slithered out of the opening.
Outside.
He rewarded himself with a deep breath of fresh air, before the sky exploded into fire.
Shipmates ran past him single file, the heavy snake of a hose under each right arm. Men scrambled frantically trying to keep their footing on the slanted deck. When they slipped, they slid over the side and fell, yelling, into the burning water.
Another fireball in the air.
Another explosion on deck. Pieces of burning metal screamed past him and the blast left him flash-blind and almost deaf. Danny"s feet slipped out from underneath him. He grabbed onto the hatch cover and kept himself from going over the side.
"Deploy the lifeboats," the captain"s voice hollered over the 1-MC. But Danny couldn"t see any lifeboats. He just heard the planes dive bombing them. He heard the explosions and saw them light up the night sky behind his clenched eyelids.
"They"re bombing the whole f.u.c.king fleet," someone yelled, and an explosion of ice-hot metal blinded him and sliced off his legs as clean as a guillotine.
Funny, he felt no pain.
"This is all your fault," Master Chief Watts said. Danny looked up and saw the big man looking down at him.
"My legs..." Danny said, and saw them tumble down the slanted deck and fall through the hole that the explosion had left.
"You should have dogged that hatch," Chief Watts said. "Piece of s.h.i.t sailor if I"ve ever seen one."
The waterline slid quickly up the deck. Sailors lost their balance trying to scramble up away from the flaming fuel oil that covered the harbor. Some made it as far as the catwalk and held on until their arms gave out, then fell straight down into h.e.l.l. Others windmilled their arms, saw that they weren"t going to make it and just gave up, diving right into it, hoping to swim under it and come up on the far side. Fat chance. The suction of the sinking ship pulled them in, pulled them under, pulled them to their graves.
This ship deserved to go down in glory, and n.o.body knew it better than the ship herself.
Danny, legless, helpless, watched the water rise. "Help me, Chief," he whimpered.
But the chief wasn"t there.
And the explosions had stopped.
The water still rose, but it was a silent starry night and Danny"s legs were pinched tight in the partially-opened hatch. Pieces of the girl floating in diesel fuel belched up and out of the opening as the ship went down, violently, powerfully, heavily, sucking all of Danny"s secrets down with it.
He struggled, but he knew there was no use to it. The ship was in control. As he had meant to have the ship, it now had him.
Pinned to the deck like an insect, the water rose up over his chest to his chin. He stretched and struggled, but there was no hope, and he knew it even as he tried.
As cold sea water filled his lungs, Danny looked wildly around one last time.
Master Chief Watts knelt next to him.This ship deserved a courageous ending like she just gave herself, son. But you ... Well, some men just ain"t made to be sailors," he said. "The ship never forgets. You did good to get away the first time, acting the way you did in uniform. Too bad you pressed your luck."
This ship he"d kicked and swore at and sabotaged and finally bombed: she"d invited him in, confused him and then held him under-water while she made herself a courageous exit.
Too bad Danny was her only witness.
As his eardrums exploded and the pressure forced the last of the air from his lungs, Danny finally understood the meaning of respect.
Rebirthby Dominick Cancilla Dominick Cancilla"s short fiction has appeared in magazine"s such as "Cemetery Dance," "Wetbones" and "Night Terrors." His work can also be found in such publications as the "Best of Cemetery Dance," the recent "Psychos" anthology edited by Robert Bloch and "Bending the Landscape" anthologies. He currently lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife and child. He dedicates "Rebirth" to everyone who thought that his wife was insane for preferring a midwife to stirrups.
THERE WAS NO way the baby was ready, and Helen wasn"t about to let it out. She lay on the floor of her small apartment with ankles crossed and thighs pressed together, fighting against her body"s urge to expel. Pain, fever, and anxiety squeezed sweat from her swollen flesh. Even without clothes she felt claustrophobic, trapped in the still summer air all around her.
She couldn"t remember the last night in which she"d slept more than an hour or two, and the incessant buzzing of a pair of flies that seemed intent on taking advantage of her condition had begun to resonate in her aching head. A weakening part of Helen begged her to let the child on its way, but the G.o.ddess, the mother within her refused to give in to simple needs of the flesh.
It took nine months for a baby to mature enough to breath outside its mothera"everyone knew that. The night when Helen had spread her legs to admit the horrid thing that would seed her child seemed only a few daysa"could it have been months?a"distant. Not nearly enough time. If she birthed the child now, she would spend the rest of her life wondering if it were fully, completely hers.
The child shifted; Helen moaned. She tried to relax by looking for pictures in her ceiling"s stucco, but all she could find were misshapen things too disturbing to give comfort.
The weight of her belly made her back ache. She tried rolling onto her side and, finding no comfort there, struggled to her feet. Standing seemed to help for some reason she couldn"t fathom, and moving around the living room helped even more. Years of practice holding items between her legs under a skirt to avoid paying for them helped her walk normally despite her clenched muscles, but did nothing to lessen the drag of her burden.
A pair of large windows, open in hopes of trapping a breeze, stretched nearly floor to ceiling on one wall. Helen stood at one and then the other, pressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly against the gla.s.s and drawing what coolness she could from them. Absentmindedly rubbing the bulges of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she wondered if the young couple looking up at her from the building"s courtyard two stories below might be inspired to parenthood by her example.
Her gaze wandered, looking for distraction, eventually coming to rest on the apartment across the breezeway where her child"s father lived. He was a good mana"handsome, young, professionala"who exuded honest intensity and animal strength. On a long-ago night, Helen had stood at this same window with the lights off, enjoying herself and watching the man across the way first strike and then make love to his beloved wife. Their son had lain in his crib wailing but ignored all the while. The scene had raised feelings in Helen that she hadn"t even known she was capable of, and from those feelings had grown her plan to have the powerful man"s child.