"I dunno, Father," Radar peeped, immediately upon entering the motor pool
shed, "He looks okay to me." Radar stepped to one side and let several
others file in behind him, Potter, Hawkeye and Sidney lining up in front of
the cot that had found its way into the shed for purposes on which Mulcahy
didn't linger as he followed the group in, turning to accost Radar.
"What do you mean, he 'looks okay to you'?" His voice riled slightly in anger, but he calmed himself and took note of the odd expression the Pooka was giving the afflicted corpsman. It was something like awe, mingled with nervousness.
"Radar," Mulcahy leaned closer, gripping the Corporal's upper arm firmly, "Did you have anything to do with this?" Just what he'd need... another day of running around trying to rescue another staff member's brain from the jaws of this monsterous la-- lamb. The dream flickered back into his mind, shaking him up a bit, but he shook back, shaking it off and returning to the issue at hand.
"Yo, Klinger," Sidney, meanwhile, leaned down, trying to rouse the corpsman from the upright fetal position he'd taken up on the cot, the hem of his white wedding dress twisted in his hand, slightly torn, and the entire outfit smeared with mud.
"No!" Radar hissed, "Or, I don't know... I don't think so!" He stared back at Klinger, his jaw gaping open at the brightness that flared and flickered waveringly in him.
Radar's head tilted in a familiar manner, and he looked up, as far as the Father could see, to a corner of his glasses frames. Mulcahy was silent until the Pooka looked back to him.
"You okay, son?" Colonel Potter urged.
"God says that no, I didn't do it," Radar offered, "But he said for me to tell you hi, while I'm talking to you, now, 'cause I just might not, anymore."
Father Mulcahy rolled his eyes at the reported source of Radar's information, knowing fully well that it was that dragon that was appraising him of the situation.
"Well, does he know who-- what-- wait. What?" Mulcahy cut himself off as his concern for Klinger finally yielded enough space to notice the dagger-like look that Radar was giving him. It was unnerving, seeing that cheerful countenance so angry, and it made his fingers itch for the sword he'd recently learned to pull from the air. But the next words from the Pooka's mouth stopped him still in his tracks.
"He knows. About Meg."
Mulcahy trembled violently. "Good lord, Radar, can't you speak straight for just one moment? Who does?"
Radar shrugged off the attempt of the shaken Hunter to subdue his wilder nature. "Just about anyone," he lied infuriatingly, tugging at Mulcahy's ire to the point where he had to rub his thumb over the cross on his collar to calm himself. Obviously, everyone couldn't know... but, at the same time, at least one person did. It was enough to drive a man mad.
Speaking of madmen, Radar turned his attention away from Father Mulcahy and squeezed up beside Hawkeye to join in the questioning of Klinger.
The others' attention diverted to the corporal, the chaplain went from the motor pool shed in a fog. The motor pool itself deserted except for the slumbering form of the backwater attendant, Mulcahy slipped into the passenger's side of one of the jeeps, and sat there, his hands clenched and his fingers entwined in a knot just between his knees.
He turned his head on his bowed neck to look pleadingly in the direction of the empty driver's seat. He wanted, above all, to know where all this was heading.
He'd been sure of his actions the previous night. He'd felt more sure of it than anything else he'd ever done. So why was this lamb coming back to haunt him? Why was he doubting, now? And where was this doubt coming from? The angels were silent: oppressively? Disapprovingly? Or was that his imagination? Was it perhaps the simple silence of the free will God gave man?
'I am,' the priest murmured to himself, 'His servant. I have carried out his work.' He tested these words with himself, putting them out into the air ahead of him so that he could inspect them more closely. They seemed to him to be right and just. But now, now the angels said nothing. Had he become spoiled? All his life, he'd had to guess at what it was God wanted out of him, and now, now he'd had His own words whispered in his ear (he felt the goat's tongue licking at his temple). Could he ever go back to guessing, to stabbing in the dark (blade hitting flesh, flesh yielding, splitting, dissolving into a shower of ash), to making mistakes (his disapproving stare reflected in the dragon-lenses of the Pooka)?
"Yes," he answered himself gently, "I have to."
He lifted his hands to the dashboard of the jeep, and put his head down on them, falling back into a comfortable and familiar routine of prayer to fill the silence of the void left by the angels' silence, and felt sufficiently comforted that he soon drifted off to sleep.
He was so exhausted from his sleepless night, on top of everything else that'd been going on recently, that he didn't wake up to the sound of a large clatter of tools from inside the shed, accompanied by a confusion of shouting.
Rizzo didn't wake up either. Probably because he'd crawled under the jeep as drunk as a skunk only a few hours earlier and was thoroughly passed out.
A flash of white as the shed door slammed open, and a scream, barely distinguishable as words, of, "OH GOD, LAVERNE, I DIDN'T MEAN IT, I DIDN'T NO DON'T MAKE ME I WON'T GO I'LL--"
The door shuffled back shut as the scuffle returned inside, but soon a frazzled-looking Radar led the way as Potter, Pierce, and Freedman all followed him out of the shed.
"Oh, boy," Radar whispered in astonishment, "I've only seen one person go that batty before-- my uncle Ed when he got told his wife just had his sixth daughter."
Hawkeye shook his head, his eyes wide. "I've only seen one person act like that, before, too:" he looked around, "Henry Blake, in the OR at dawn."
The entire group fell silent for a moment, then everyone began at once: Sidney with, "You're not saying that Henry--" Potter with, "You think one of those new--" Radar's voice lifting above the rest in a horrified shriek, "You think Klinger's a vampire?!?"
Hawkeye held out his hands, "It would explain why he didn't want to come out here and say hello to the nice fresh sunshine."
"But it wouldn't explain, for example," Potter objected, "What in the name of Carrie's corset he was going on about!"
Hawkeye shook his head, "No... I think, for an explanation of THAT, we should turn to our resident expert on the topic of cobwebs." He gestured to Sidney.
"Don't look at me;" Sidney protested, "I hardly got a look at him. From what I could see, I could wear out three brand-new couches and never get to the bottom of what's up with that kid. The weird thing is--"
"There's a weird thing, too?" Hawkeye gaped.
"The weird thing is that psychoses like that aren't supposed to fly out of the woodwork at a moment's notice. I've come up here to examine Klinger maybe a hundred times since he's been here, and I've never seen a trace, not even a hint of all this. Unless he's been taking acting lessons behind our back, which I seriously doubt, a mental problem that seems this severe would have required many years of stressful conditions a lot worse than working at a M*A*S*H unit, I can tell you that, right now."
Hawkeye and Potter milled about anxiously in front of the shed while Sidney was expostulating. The speech was punctuated by a shout from Hawkeye as Radar rushed around and popped up in front of him, moving like a whirlwind, "Hawkeye!" he hissed, in realization.
Hawkeye grabbed his chest, "No, Radar, I'm not in the market for a size eight and a half cardiac arrest, today, but please try back tomorrow."
"No, Hawkeye, really. Remember what... what Meg said last night, about the, uh... the Vantrue?"
Hawkeye squinted, "The Vantrue, the, um, the magic ones?"
Radar shook his head, "No, the ones who are all... you know..." he leaned forward, "Crazy!"
Hawkeye furrowed his brow, "Oh, no, Radar, that was the Malkavi--" Hawkeye started to remind the Pooka, then, his face fell, and he turned with a devastated look back to the shed. "The Malkavians. That Colonel."
"Pierce, what in blue blazes are you talking about?!" Potter bellowed.
Hawkeye cut him off, "Sidney, go get a sedative from post-op, quick." Sidney ran off and Hawkeye looked back at the door to the shed. "Jesus Christ. This is ridiculous, we've got to get out of here, let people know where we are. And Klinger..." he shook his head, sadly, his ramblings simply serving to irritate the Colonel further.
"Pierce! I'd like to know what's going on in my own BLESSED camp! If you don't start talking sense, the next morphine Sid brings out will be for YOU."
Hawkeye looked up from his intent ire. "I'm sorry, Colonel, of course. You see, Radar and I, we--" Hawkeye faltered.
"Overheard!" Radar piped in, helpfully.
"Yeah, we overheard Meg-- the, uh, the Gangrel-- talking about the Malkavians, and about how they have a tendency to infect, as it were, people around them with insanity, and..."
"And..." Potter led gently, lowly, seeming to know where this was going.
"And about how Colonel Travaneau was one."
"Great Mary and Joseph." The Colonel uttered, Sidney Freedman running back past with the requested syringe, and entering the shed.
Hawkeye, meanwhile, looking out over the motor pool, finally spotted the dormant Chaplain in the passenger's seat of one of the jeeps. "Speaking of," he mumbled to Colonel Potter, and ran over, shaking the priest from his nap. "Father!"
Father Mulcahy found himself scooting over into the driver's seat before he had quite regained his wits, Sidney, Potter, and Radar collaborating to put the unconscious form of the white-clad corporal into the passenger's seat the chaplain had just been occupying.
"Father," Hawkeye ran around to the driver's side to explain the situation, "You've got to get Klinger out of here, take him to the-- to the- -" he looked over at Sidney, who picked up, "To the Seoul sector U.S. Military Asylum."
"Yeah," Hawkeye nodded, "And, for God's sake, let people know we're still here!"
Mulcahy easily shook off the dazes of slumber and nodded firmly, his heart stirred up by the call to action. He reached around and almost seemed to snatch the set of keys Colonel Potter was about to hand to him out of thin air. In a split second more, he was off.
~
"What do you mean, he 'looks okay to you'?" His voice riled slightly in anger, but he calmed himself and took note of the odd expression the Pooka was giving the afflicted corpsman. It was something like awe, mingled with nervousness.
"Radar," Mulcahy leaned closer, gripping the Corporal's upper arm firmly, "Did you have anything to do with this?" Just what he'd need... another day of running around trying to rescue another staff member's brain from the jaws of this monsterous la-- lamb. The dream flickered back into his mind, shaking him up a bit, but he shook back, shaking it off and returning to the issue at hand.
"Yo, Klinger," Sidney, meanwhile, leaned down, trying to rouse the corpsman from the upright fetal position he'd taken up on the cot, the hem of his white wedding dress twisted in his hand, slightly torn, and the entire outfit smeared with mud.
"No!" Radar hissed, "Or, I don't know... I don't think so!" He stared back at Klinger, his jaw gaping open at the brightness that flared and flickered waveringly in him.
Radar's head tilted in a familiar manner, and he looked up, as far as the Father could see, to a corner of his glasses frames. Mulcahy was silent until the Pooka looked back to him.
"You okay, son?" Colonel Potter urged.
"God says that no, I didn't do it," Radar offered, "But he said for me to tell you hi, while I'm talking to you, now, 'cause I just might not, anymore."
Father Mulcahy rolled his eyes at the reported source of Radar's information, knowing fully well that it was that dragon that was appraising him of the situation.
"Well, does he know who-- what-- wait. What?" Mulcahy cut himself off as his concern for Klinger finally yielded enough space to notice the dagger-like look that Radar was giving him. It was unnerving, seeing that cheerful countenance so angry, and it made his fingers itch for the sword he'd recently learned to pull from the air. But the next words from the Pooka's mouth stopped him still in his tracks.
"He knows. About Meg."
Mulcahy trembled violently. "Good lord, Radar, can't you speak straight for just one moment? Who does?"
Radar shrugged off the attempt of the shaken Hunter to subdue his wilder nature. "Just about anyone," he lied infuriatingly, tugging at Mulcahy's ire to the point where he had to rub his thumb over the cross on his collar to calm himself. Obviously, everyone couldn't know... but, at the same time, at least one person did. It was enough to drive a man mad.
Speaking of madmen, Radar turned his attention away from Father Mulcahy and squeezed up beside Hawkeye to join in the questioning of Klinger.
The others' attention diverted to the corporal, the chaplain went from the motor pool shed in a fog. The motor pool itself deserted except for the slumbering form of the backwater attendant, Mulcahy slipped into the passenger's side of one of the jeeps, and sat there, his hands clenched and his fingers entwined in a knot just between his knees.
He turned his head on his bowed neck to look pleadingly in the direction of the empty driver's seat. He wanted, above all, to know where all this was heading.
He'd been sure of his actions the previous night. He'd felt more sure of it than anything else he'd ever done. So why was this lamb coming back to haunt him? Why was he doubting, now? And where was this doubt coming from? The angels were silent: oppressively? Disapprovingly? Or was that his imagination? Was it perhaps the simple silence of the free will God gave man?
'I am,' the priest murmured to himself, 'His servant. I have carried out his work.' He tested these words with himself, putting them out into the air ahead of him so that he could inspect them more closely. They seemed to him to be right and just. But now, now the angels said nothing. Had he become spoiled? All his life, he'd had to guess at what it was God wanted out of him, and now, now he'd had His own words whispered in his ear (he felt the goat's tongue licking at his temple). Could he ever go back to guessing, to stabbing in the dark (blade hitting flesh, flesh yielding, splitting, dissolving into a shower of ash), to making mistakes (his disapproving stare reflected in the dragon-lenses of the Pooka)?
"Yes," he answered himself gently, "I have to."
He lifted his hands to the dashboard of the jeep, and put his head down on them, falling back into a comfortable and familiar routine of prayer to fill the silence of the void left by the angels' silence, and felt sufficiently comforted that he soon drifted off to sleep.
He was so exhausted from his sleepless night, on top of everything else that'd been going on recently, that he didn't wake up to the sound of a large clatter of tools from inside the shed, accompanied by a confusion of shouting.
Rizzo didn't wake up either. Probably because he'd crawled under the jeep as drunk as a skunk only a few hours earlier and was thoroughly passed out.
A flash of white as the shed door slammed open, and a scream, barely distinguishable as words, of, "OH GOD, LAVERNE, I DIDN'T MEAN IT, I DIDN'T NO DON'T MAKE ME I WON'T GO I'LL--"
The door shuffled back shut as the scuffle returned inside, but soon a frazzled-looking Radar led the way as Potter, Pierce, and Freedman all followed him out of the shed.
"Oh, boy," Radar whispered in astonishment, "I've only seen one person go that batty before-- my uncle Ed when he got told his wife just had his sixth daughter."
Hawkeye shook his head, his eyes wide. "I've only seen one person act like that, before, too:" he looked around, "Henry Blake, in the OR at dawn."
The entire group fell silent for a moment, then everyone began at once: Sidney with, "You're not saying that Henry--" Potter with, "You think one of those new--" Radar's voice lifting above the rest in a horrified shriek, "You think Klinger's a vampire?!?"
Hawkeye held out his hands, "It would explain why he didn't want to come out here and say hello to the nice fresh sunshine."
"But it wouldn't explain, for example," Potter objected, "What in the name of Carrie's corset he was going on about!"
Hawkeye shook his head, "No... I think, for an explanation of THAT, we should turn to our resident expert on the topic of cobwebs." He gestured to Sidney.
"Don't look at me;" Sidney protested, "I hardly got a look at him. From what I could see, I could wear out three brand-new couches and never get to the bottom of what's up with that kid. The weird thing is--"
"There's a weird thing, too?" Hawkeye gaped.
"The weird thing is that psychoses like that aren't supposed to fly out of the woodwork at a moment's notice. I've come up here to examine Klinger maybe a hundred times since he's been here, and I've never seen a trace, not even a hint of all this. Unless he's been taking acting lessons behind our back, which I seriously doubt, a mental problem that seems this severe would have required many years of stressful conditions a lot worse than working at a M*A*S*H unit, I can tell you that, right now."
Hawkeye and Potter milled about anxiously in front of the shed while Sidney was expostulating. The speech was punctuated by a shout from Hawkeye as Radar rushed around and popped up in front of him, moving like a whirlwind, "Hawkeye!" he hissed, in realization.
Hawkeye grabbed his chest, "No, Radar, I'm not in the market for a size eight and a half cardiac arrest, today, but please try back tomorrow."
"No, Hawkeye, really. Remember what... what Meg said last night, about the, uh... the Vantrue?"
Hawkeye squinted, "The Vantrue, the, um, the magic ones?"
Radar shook his head, "No, the ones who are all... you know..." he leaned forward, "Crazy!"
Hawkeye furrowed his brow, "Oh, no, Radar, that was the Malkavi--" Hawkeye started to remind the Pooka, then, his face fell, and he turned with a devastated look back to the shed. "The Malkavians. That Colonel."
"Pierce, what in blue blazes are you talking about?!" Potter bellowed.
Hawkeye cut him off, "Sidney, go get a sedative from post-op, quick." Sidney ran off and Hawkeye looked back at the door to the shed. "Jesus Christ. This is ridiculous, we've got to get out of here, let people know where we are. And Klinger..." he shook his head, sadly, his ramblings simply serving to irritate the Colonel further.
"Pierce! I'd like to know what's going on in my own BLESSED camp! If you don't start talking sense, the next morphine Sid brings out will be for YOU."
Hawkeye looked up from his intent ire. "I'm sorry, Colonel, of course. You see, Radar and I, we--" Hawkeye faltered.
"Overheard!" Radar piped in, helpfully.
"Yeah, we overheard Meg-- the, uh, the Gangrel-- talking about the Malkavians, and about how they have a tendency to infect, as it were, people around them with insanity, and..."
"And..." Potter led gently, lowly, seeming to know where this was going.
"And about how Colonel Travaneau was one."
"Great Mary and Joseph." The Colonel uttered, Sidney Freedman running back past with the requested syringe, and entering the shed.
Hawkeye, meanwhile, looking out over the motor pool, finally spotted the dormant Chaplain in the passenger's seat of one of the jeeps. "Speaking of," he mumbled to Colonel Potter, and ran over, shaking the priest from his nap. "Father!"
Father Mulcahy found himself scooting over into the driver's seat before he had quite regained his wits, Sidney, Potter, and Radar collaborating to put the unconscious form of the white-clad corporal into the passenger's seat the chaplain had just been occupying.
"Father," Hawkeye ran around to the driver's side to explain the situation, "You've got to get Klinger out of here, take him to the-- to the- -" he looked over at Sidney, who picked up, "To the Seoul sector U.S. Military Asylum."
"Yeah," Hawkeye nodded, "And, for God's sake, let people know we're still here!"
Mulcahy easily shook off the dazes of slumber and nodded firmly, his heart stirred up by the call to action. He reached around and almost seemed to snatch the set of keys Colonel Potter was about to hand to him out of thin air. In a split second more, he was off.
~