The Spaceship Next Door

¹⁰ CHOKING HAZARD

Corporal Sam Corning checked into the barracks at twenty-two-hundred hours, after a briefing on the latest info regarding the ship. Said briefing lasted a solid hour, and at the end of it he felt no more enlightened than he was before it started. He did walk out a little more worried—in a non-specific sort of way—than when he walked in, and that was certainly a change.

Part of the issue was just that he had no classification level to speak of, so any information being delivered to him had all the interesting stuff removed ahead of time. Most briefings it was seamless, but there were days when very specific information suddenly became very general information, and any efforts to get greater detail were met with the classic need-to-know line.

All of which was pretty amazing, since the way Sam saw it, if that thing jumped up and started mowing people down with a ray gun, he would be one of the first to go. That was something he thought he probably needed to know.

There were other times in briefings when it became abundantly clear the real information had been removed and replaced with fake information. Sam and the other men of his squad called these tofu briefings, where the meat was substituted with something that only looked like meat. The briefing in which they were informed of the impending arrival of Edgar Somerville was a tofu briefing, because nobody really believed he was a journalist doing a story. Even Sergeant Phineas rolled his eyes when he read it.

That particular tofu briefing was especially annoying, because inside of a week Annie Collins had more accurate intel than Sam did, which was just insulting.

The briefing that ended at twenty-one-forty-five was not a tofu briefing. It wasn’t really even a briefing, since no new information was imparted. It was a lecture on the importance of drilling, maintaining order, holding position, keeping equipment at the ready, and staying “awake and focused.” It followed a terse reminder that Sorrow Falls was a de facto war zone and they had to remember that, even if the war was not apparent and the enemy unresponsive.

It was a little terrifying.

By twenty-two-fifteen, Sam and the others had talked it over, and after a few valid points on the subject of getting a little lazy about perimeters, focused on two or three details from the meeting that could be made fun of safely. For instance, Phineas was unreasonably fond of the word perambulate and used it—incorrectly, they were sure—so often it became their own little drinking game. (Not that they drank on the base during a briefing in front of a superior. They mimed each drink when the occasion arose.) So they went through every instance of the word, and that seemed to calm everyone down. Then it was time to bed down, as some of them—although not Sam—had sentry duty down the hill at oh-six-hundred.

For a couple of soldiers, that only meant talking in whispers, rather than sleeping.

“What do you think, Sammie?” asked Dill Louboutin in that bayou drawl of his. Dill was two years younger and five inches shorter than Sam, and seemed to think those two years and five inches made Sam someone to look up to, metaphorically. Dill was new to the base and to anywhere this far north. His first three weeks were spent talking almost non-stop about the hilly terrain. Sam didn’t appreciate just how flat Louisiana and Texas were—he was a West Virginia boy, and knew from hills—until Dill came along to explain it to him.

Dill had a lot of theories about the ship. Probably everyone did, but Dill had a mouth that kept going when his brain had long stopped, so he extemporized on the subject at length. And since he was newer to the base than Sam was, every time there was a briefing, Dill wanted to know if it was unusual.

This was the first time the brief actually was unusual.

“What do I think about what?” Sam asked.

Dill was on the top bunk, looking down. He could rain words on Sam for hours, and had.

“You know what.”

“I think we’ve gotten sloppy of late is all. Hard to stay focused when nothing’s happening. Sarge isn’t wrong, there are soldiers on war games more alert than we are.”

“Yeah, but what did it mean.”

“It didn’t mean anything, Dill.”

“I think it means something’s coming.”

“Like what? Aliens? We already have that.”

Dill shook his head, which shook the whole bunk.

“I’m telling you. Something’s in the air. I can smell it, like ozone.”

“Ozone? You don’t even know what that is. Go to sleep, Pickles.”

Dill didn’t like the nickname, which was a little strange because his full first name was Dillard. He could have gone by that instead and skipped the obvious pickle reference.

“Ahhh,” he grumbled, and disappeared over his bunk.

There was quiet for about two minutes, but then he was back again.

“Hey!”

“Dill, I swear to God...”

“No, look! Who is that?”

Sam rolled up onto an elbow and looked along the row of bunks. Someone was walking down the row, which was not in itself unusual. The latrine was at the other end of the tent. He was only in his boxers, and that was a little odd, but just a little. It was a warm night.

“Think that’s Vogel. What of it? Man’s gotta go, man’s gotta go.”

“Don’t think that’s where he’s going. Watch what he’s doing, brother.”

There was something distinctively odd about Vogel’s movements. His gestures were halting. Jerky, almost. Somewhere between Frankenstein’s monster and a marionette.

Hank Vogel had a few years on Sam. He was a stocky kind of big, not super bright, but friendly enough. Sam would never say Hank was graceful, but he wasn’t usually as stiff as this, either.

He was stopping every few feet along the central corridor, standing at the end of each cot and looking at the occupants. The stare lasted eight or ten seconds, it seemed.

“Holy crap, I bet he’s sleepwalking,” Dill said.

“Could be.”

Hank’s eyes were definitely open. It was hard to tell if he was awake behind them.

“What should we do?”

“Maybe leave him be, I’m sure he’ll go back to bed soon enough.”

“Hank!” Dill whispered.

“C’mon, leave him alone.”

“No this is too good. Hank!”

Vogel turned at the sound, and sleep-wandered his way to the base of the bed.

“How you doin’, Hank?” Dill asked, waving his hand in front of Vogel’s face.

Hank didn’t respond. It was just about the creepiest non-response ever. Sam was beginning to dislike this. Dill felt no similar qualms.

“You in there, Corporal Vogel?”

Hank opened his mouth.

“Dill…” Sam said.

“Shh. What is it, Hank?”

“Are… you…?”

Hank spoke like he had a mouthful of food and didn’t know where his tongue was supposed to be.

“What’s that?” Dill asked. He hopped off the bunk. Hank—who was taller than both of them—towered above.

“Are you,” Hank repeated.

“Sam, should we wake him?”

Sam remembered being told to never awaken a sleepwalker. He thought it was probably just one of those things people said that wasn’t actually true, but Hank wasn’t hurting anybody, so why risk it?

“No, leave him be.”

“Are you,” Hank said again.

“Am I? No. I don’t think I am.”

“Dill…”

“Well I don’t know how else to answer.”

Hank lowered his gaze from Dill and turned to head down the aisle, and then Dill did something dumb. It was, in all fairness, something that only came off as really stupid in hindsight, but still.

When Vogel turned, Dill put his hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder.

“Hold on, Hank, let’s talk this…”

Corporal Vogel’s reaction was sudden and alarming. His left hand lashed out and clamped around Dill’s throat.

Dill emitted a gurgling shout, with both his hands around the larger man’s arm.

“Choking…” he cried. “Choking me…”

“Hank!” Sam exclaimed.

He was up in a second, his arm around Vogel’s, trying to peel the fingers loose. Dill was beet-red already. Vogel was going to kill him.

“HELP!” Sam shouted. “HELP US!”

Four men from neighboring bunks stirred, realized what was wrong, and jumped in, but Vogel’s grip was like iron, and efforts to tackle him were proving strangely impossible.

“Wake up Hank!” Sam said. “Come on, you’re killing him!”

Arms and legs and bodies pulling and shouting, but Vogel was like a rock. A rock that wanted to crush Dill Louboutin’s windpipe.

Finally, someone had the idea to slap Hank Vogel across the face.

He trembled, his eyes blinked, and he released Dill, who fell gasping to the floor.

It was said later that in this moment, it looked as if Corporal Vogel became aware of himself and his surroundings. Like he’d been away for a while and just returned to discover himself in entirely the wrong place. Then the moment passed, and Hank started to convulse.

“Hold him, hold him,” Sam said. Vogel was falling backwards, arms flailing madly. His eyes, still open, had rolled back in his skull and there was foam coming out of his mouth.

They got him to the floor, where he continued to seize.

“Get him something to bite down on!” somebody shouted. Sam was on top of the larger man, trying to hold his body still before he broke himself or something else.

“Like what?” someone else said. Half the barracks were awake now.

“I don’t know!”

Sam said, “get the medics in here, for Chrissake!”

Then, quite dramatically, Hank Vogel seized up, held his entire body stiff in a huge inhale, and then stopped and collapsed. His arms and legs fell limp and his eyelids fell shut.

Sam put his finger on Vogel’s neck and listened to his lungs.

What the hell just happened?

“I don’t think he’s breathing!” Sam said. “Where’s the medic?”