Chapter 36: John Cullum
1343 Hours, February 19th, 2560 (Military Calendar) Quarters of Fleet Admiral Lord Terrance Hood, Cairo Station, Earth
Subject: Transcript of Conversation between Fleet Admiral Hood and Colonel Richard Fannin
Richard Fannin: Sir, it has been three months since all contact was lost with the inner and outer colonies
Lord Hood: I am very well aware of that Colonel. It would be best that you get to your point.
RF: My point is sir that we must assume that the colonies are either lost or can take care of themselves
LH: That idea is unacceptable. It is the mission of the UNSC to…
RF: To protect both humanity and her colonies. But our ships are no longer able to travel through slipspace, nor are we able to establish contact with any of the other colonies. The only jurisdiction that the UNSC has left is within the Sol System
LH: You are one of the few people who can get away with talking to me like that Fannin.
RF: With good reason sir. I was the one that recommended that all surviving Spartans be recalled to the Sol system a month before slipspace travel became impossible, and it was through me and my operatives that we were able to locate the headquarters of the Insurrectionist leader Randall Flagg.
LH: Insurrectionists on Earth. They have been responsible for causing as much damage as the Covenant during the First and Second Battles of Earth over this past year. Suicide bombings, inciting riots, increasingly bolder raids on UNSC facilities; and now if your information is correct Colonel they have acquired a nuclear arsenal.
RF: My information is always correct sir
LH: It better be. You are the only eyes and ears the UNSC has left
RF: The purging of the Office of Naval Intelligence was a necessary move sir. There were too many Insurrectionist sleeper cells permeating the organization, and after Section Zero went rogue there was simply no choice
LH: That does little to make me sleep well at night
RF: We will all have to lose more sleep if it means maintaining order sir. Have you given any more thought to my proposed operation?
LH: You mean to commit all the remaining Spartans in a raid against Randall Flagg's headquarters
RF: We will need all of them sir, and there may not be another chance like this
LH: Very well. I'm giving a green light to codename Operation Discordia…
…
11:01 A.M., June 10th, 1977 (Gregorian Calendar) Residence of John Cullum, Lovell, Maine
Eddie laid flat on his back on the less than sparkling white tile of John Cullum's bathroom, head propped up against one of the man's many red flannel shirts. The gunslinger was on one knee next to his wounded leg with a pair of pliers that had been sanitized in rubbing alcohol and a tupperware bowl sitting by his knee. The Master Chief knelt beside him with a brown leather belt in one hand and a can of biofoam in the other.
"Are you ready?" Roland asked.
Eddie rolled his eyes, "I have a bullet stuck in my leg and two of the scariest men I have ever met in my life about to take it out. Of course I'm ready."
Roland frowned, "This is no time for jokes."
"Oh I think this is a great time for jokes. Here is another one; two gunslingers and a Spartan walk into a bar…" There was a muffling sound as John shoved the leather belt into Eddie's mouth, followed by a series of inaudible curses. Without ceremony the gunslinger plunged the pair of pliers into the bullet hole causing Eddie to bite down hard into the leather, leaving sizable dents. There was a clinking sound as Roland dropped the bullet into the tupperware container, and Eddie pulled the belt out of his mouth.
"Thanks for the warning Rol…Oww. What the hell?" Eddie's face grimaced once more in pain as John applied biofoam to the wound.
"Careful it stings," the Master Chief said in a flat tone of voice.
Eddie thudded his head against the flannel shirt. Another joke. Old long, tall, and ugly number two just made another joke. Eventually the stinging diminished and was replaced by a numbing sensation that ran up the lower half of his leg, stopping just above the ankle. As Eddie stood up, unsteadily at first but quickly regaining his balance, John Cullum walked through the bathroom door.
"Sorry, but this is the only extra-large shirt I could find ya," Cullum said, his thick northern accent making the word sorry come out as saawy. Cullum handed the shirt to the Spartan whose own was covered in Jack Andolini's blood. Eddie fought back a snicker by biting his tongue hard when he saw the front of the shirt had a large yellow smiley face on it.
The Master Chief frowned at the shirt, and turned it inside out when he took it, tearing off the tag on the back. "Come on," Eddie said. "Let's give the big guy some privacy."
There was a clicking sound as the bathroom door shut behind John and the sound of boots thudding on the linoleum floor of the hallway that led to the kitchen and the den. John peeled of the bloodied shirt and tossed it into the trash can next to the sink. He was confident that John Cullum would be smart enough to burn it later, if the man was anything like John 117 himself, which the Spartan suspected that he was. John looked down at his hands which were holding the black shirt. He had thoroughly washed them prior to pulling the bullet out of Eddie's leg, but all the soap and water in the world could not get the specks of Andolini's blood out of his fingernails. The specks were small enough for nobody to notice them unless they examined his hands up close, but they were still there.
Andolini himself had not known anything, at least nothing that the ka-tet had not already known or that John had not already suspected. The Sombra Corporation, the representatives of The Crimson King in the business world and likely had branches across dozens of different realities, had hired Enrico Balazar to set up the ambush. Andolini's bloodied hand prints on John's old shirt was the result of the Spartan ramping up the intensity of the interrogation as he questioned Andolini about who had supplied the information about where and when he and the gunslingers would show up. Of course Andolini had not known who the informant was, and John had not expected him to know. The Spartan estimated that it would take the police at least an hour to collect enough of Andolini's teeth in order to make a positive ID on what was left of the body. He pulled the shirt over his head and looked in the mirror, the light blue eyes of his reflection meeting his own. For the first time in his life John was willingly breaking a promise he had made. I'm sorry Cortana, he thought. But being a good man is not enough to keep you safe.
…
"Do you have any tobacco?" Roland asked, sitting on a brown foam stuffed chair in John Cullum's den.
Cullum fished an unopened pack of Camel Filters out of his pocket and tossed it to the gunslinger. Roland struggled with the plastic wrapping for a moment before giving up and tearing it off with his teeth. "Haven't smoked in ten years, but for some reason I got'a hell of an urge to go buy a pack at Earl's store dis mornin," Cullum said. Roland moved to toss the pack back to Cullum, an unlit cigarette in the gunslinger's mouth, but the man held up his hand. "Keep it. Don't need ta be startin up again anyways."
Was it really the urge to smoke that brought you to the store, or was it something else. Something that Roland would call ka? Eddie thought. He believed in ka just like the gunslinger, and much like Roland this belief was not born out of blind faith, but out of the realization that there were just certain coincidences that could not be explained otherwise. Of course that did not mean that he had to like ka. On certain levels he hated it. Eddie looked at Roland, then down the hallway at the bathroom door where the Master Chief was changing, and then back at Cullum. Three men all with brown hair and light blue eyes. Eddie figured it was about time to see just how much work ka had decided to do.
"Hey John, you said you were in the Army right?" he asked.
"Ayup, served my country in Korea."
"Just out curiosity what was your service number?"
Cullum rubbed his chin, "Bit of a strange question, but I suppose dere's no harm in answering it," he said, elongating the a in harm. "Mine was 51 343 117."
And there goes another coincidence, Eddie thought, and then. John, four letters. Cullum, six letters. 1+1+7 is nine. Add them up and you get nineteen, how's that for coincidences? Still he decided to push even further. "Well if you really don't mind strange questions, you didn't happen to play any sports in high school did you?"
Cullum nodded, "Played varsity football all four years."
"And let me guess. The name of your team was The Spartans."
Cullum gave Eddie a surprised look, and the way the man tilted his head so much like Roland and the Master Chief did made the hairs stand up on Eddie's arms. "How did you know that?" Cullum asked.
"Lucky guess," he said.
"This is not tobacco," Roland said from the chair, looking at the lit cigarette with distaste. Eddie sighed and plucked the cigarette out of the gunslinger's hand, tore off the filter, and handed it back to him.
"Try it like that," he said. Roland took another drag, and nodded his head.
"Better, but still too weak," Roland said. The gunslinger glanced up as the Master Chief walked into the room, wearing the inside out black smiley faced shirt.
"Where do we go from here?" he asked.
"Well that's the tricky part. We know from the zip code that Calvin Tower is in Lovell Maine, but we don't know where he is staying at," Eddie said.
"I know," Cullum said. "I keep an eye on all the newcomers in town, old habits die hard I guess. Your boy Calvin hasn't been doin a good job at hidin, if that's what you wanted em to do. Most of the bookstore's in Lovell know em by name now, been givin out the address where he is a stayin like it twas candy."
The Master Chief clenched his teeth. He was stuck here in 1977, over two decades behind where he wanted to be, and the man they were supposed to be doing business with, business that if finished would ultimately save his life, was doing everything possible to get himself killed. "Where is he?" the Spartan asked.
Cullum crossed his arms, "I'll tell ya, but first why don't you boys tell me who ya really are." He gazed at the Master Chief, the gunslinger, and Eddie. "Are ya walk-ins?"
"Walk-ins?" Eddie asked.
Cullum nodded, "Been some sightins of em over the past five years. People showing up in strange clothes, speaking strange languages. A few of em look as if they'd been in a nuclear war. Most of the," he coughed, "academic community dismiss the sightins as hoaxes, and until today I've never seen em myself." He looked at the three strangers again, each in turn. "And that is what ya are, aren't ya?"
Roland thought for a moment, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray before nodding, "Aye, we are walk-ins." John Cullum's eyes widened slightly, but other than that he remained fully composed.
"Were do the walk-ins come in from?" the Master Chief asked.
"Most of the sightins occur on Turtle Back Lane. Suppose you are looking for a way back where ya come from. Could give you directions if you want," Cullum said, and the Master Chief nodded. If there was a doorway on Turtle Back Lane where all the walk-ins were coming from then it would mean a way back, a way back to her.
"We need an auto-carriage," Roland said, "and directions to Calvin Tower."
Cullum chuckled a little and began writing on a sheet of yellow lined paper, "I got a spare auto-carriage ya can use, although I prefer to call it a Jeep myself. Clutch is a bit trig but it will get ya were your goin."
Roland turned to Eddie, "Do you still remember how to drive?"
"I'll drive," the Master Chief said.
"You know how to drive a clutch?" Eddie asked. He wouldn't have expected manual transmissions to still be around nearly six centuries in the future.
"Yes," the Master Chief said. In reality he did not, at least not stick shifts from the 20th century, but he was a fast leaner.