TAG-LINES

I had to get it out of my mind that he was no longer a sergeant. Yet when one was groggy, one's mind defaulted.

There he was standing over me, calling my name. 'Sergeant' Blaine, he wanted me to wake up.

I was lying flat on my back, and gradually noticed the hospital room I was in. The beeping of medical equipment came into focus.

As did Blaine's voice. "Hey," he said, "you're back." He stood to his full height and added, "I've got some good news, dude, as well as some bad news. Which can you handle?"

I tried lifting my arm to bring a hand to my forehead, but the arm stayed stubbornly on the bed beside my body. I must have sounded weak like a freshly shelled grunt at the front, but it was no matter. I asked, "Water?"

Blaine reached for a cup with ice-water and a straw. Holding the straw to my mouth, I took in the fresh coldness of blessed refreshment. Wow, was I dry. After the effort of a few glorious sips, my head fell back onto the pillow, not that it had far to fall.

Blaine repeated, "So which will it be? Good news or bad news?" I squeaked out weak, 'good news'.

Blaine said, "It's a good thing that the lady had not gone for a headshot. You owe your Kevlar for being able to take a sip a second ago!"

I muttered, 'a lady'? The last thing I remembered was Blaine escorting Commander Waterford alone northward through the dark woods at the Rock River Bridge, ordering us - his squad - to stand down and wait.

He said, "Ya, let's not get ahead of ourselves. I don't want you two squabbling. I don't know what it is about, but I have the authority to order you to stow it. So, stow it."

I was too weak to ask the 'sarge', what the hell was going on. I wasn't so weak, though, to note that Blaine was wearing civilian clothes - the dark suit of a Commander to boot! Last I'd seen him he had been decked out as a senior Eye of God.

It had not got any clearer for me when he got to the 'bad news'.

He said, "You are going to have to work on your tag-lines, dude. You'd had June Osborne on your side. You had! Except when you said to her, 'now that's just pitiful'."

I had not remembered that, nor had I remembered 'June Osborne', whoever she was.

Blaine continued, "She now thinks you're the one who stole her kid, way back when. Said your 'pitiful' remark was like a fingerprint."

Me, I needed sleep. As I was drifting off, Blaine was saying, "I need the two of you, I need you both on the same page. I think I know how to get you two to lower shields."

Then blessed sleep.

SILLY SEASON

The following is what I can piece together. For how I got into that hospital bed. And for what happened once I was released.

It probably goes all the way back to the Rachel and Leah Center bombing. Up until then, I'd been a 'barracks Guardian', basically on the 'spare board'. Never knowing from day to day - sometimes hour to hour - where I'd be.

Thirty-one Handmaids. They could be replaced. I'd once handled the supply chain for that, and was amazed to see the improvements in 'the system' since my days in the Cages. Yet 31 now gone could not be good.

Worse? Twenty-six Commanders. Not to mention those subsequently salvaged. Me, I was part of the troop which been assembled for the Deeds' estate, ordered to hang everyone there, including the Commander. He must have known we were coming because we took fire from his office, where his personal Guardian was. Both he and the Guardian had started firing through the heavy oak door before we could make egress. We left the dead Guardian in the office, and took everyone else (including the Martha) and hanged them outside as ordered, visible to the street.

Back at the barracks, we'd caught shit for not displaying the Guardian's corpse. C'mon, we had standards! It was most certainly silly season.

CONTRARY ORDERS

Orders and contrary orders. Me, I could care less who was issuing them - unlike the barracks' commander who would get contradicting and conflicting orders. You should have been there the day that Commander Cushing started giving the barracks orders - because High Commander Pryce was now gone, and with the Lord.

But it was not just Cushing. I heard our barracks commander saying that he was getting conflicting orders from both Commander Waterford as well as Commander Putnam.

Not good, not good. Our boss's assistant said to him, "Is this a coup?"

To which our usually decisive boss had said, "You tell me?" The assistant held up paper copies of official orders that, apparently, were signed and said mutually exclusive things. Ordered arrests of each other. The assistant wanted to know which order to obey, adding that it was worth all our lives to choose the right one.

The barracks commander ordered me into his office, just as he said to the assistant, "You're asking if this is a coup? I think it's us, I think we ARE the coup!"

He then told his assistant to take five Guardians and personally go to support Commander Cushing and take his orders.

Once the assistant left, the boss turned to me. "You're Blaine's man, aren't you?" Before I could reply, he added, "That means you're Pryce's man, God rest his soul." He paused, then handed me a piece of paper with Commander Waterford's signature on it, the signature of a man in a coma. He said, "Take twenty Guardians, and go support Commander Putnam."

I asked why I got twenty when the boss's own assistant only got five to support Cushing?

The reply? "Because you're going to need them."

SPEAKING OF PITIFUL

Riding in the prisoners' van with ex-Commander Cushing, it was the first time I'd seen an actual Commander go all pitiful. If he'd been a woman, I'd have shot him right there. But even ex-Commanders carried lingering authority.

He said pleadingly, "Make sure you're on the right side of this, son." I reminded him that as a Commander, he had the right to choose the method of his execution.

He offered me money. I almost shot him on that alone. As the van was backing into the Guardian controlled jail, he made his last plea.

"Look," he said, "I know where your family is. Get me out of here and we'll talk." It must have been the look of disgust on my face that tipped him off that I was not that gullible. As he was being manhandled from the van, he said, "at least quiz Blaine about it. Blaine is not who you think. He was not who Pryce thought. Be smart, man, be smart."

One of my buddies clubbed him a good one on the head. I heard a bone break. It was actual fun to be able to club a Commander! And that was, as they say, that.

It was always pitiful when the formerly powerful resorted to that stuff. No matter. Cushing would soon be last week's news.

THE FALLOUT

The chaos from the Rachel and Leah bombing shuffled all sorts of decks.

My deck? I was now part of acting-High Commander Putnam's detail. When his senior Guardian was doing something else, I acted as Putnam's personal body-man.

The time out in the Chancery motor pool, I ran into the 'sarge', Nick Blaine. Both of our Commanders were inside, and I started chuckling.

"What?" asked Blaine.

I smiled at him, "Hey Sarge, out here you don't outrank me! How about that!"

All Blaine said was, "Don't get cocky, dude!"

That was not to last long. Blaine, he was on his way up. Me, I was still to be a grunt.

Me, I asked to be included in an enhanced interrogation of Cushing's security chief. That guy was both an Eye as well as a Guardian. Not that it had done him any good. He knew what Cushing knew.

I even got to ask some questions - being told that 'facts' which came from these 'enhanced sessions' rarely produced anything actionable.

Me, I asked about a woman and a small girl, two people who'd been evicted from the demolition of a row of econo-apartments a few years ago. Cut to the chase, the only hint was the 'Keyes farmhouse' in the Eastern District. Keyes farmhouse, close enough to attract dissidents, far enough to elude close scrutiny. That's all he had before succumbing.

It was the first hint I'd had of anything since losing them.

FAST FORWARD - THE DISPUTED AREA

We'd taken control of the prisoner, Commander Waterford, at the south side of the Rock Creek Bridge, the border between Gilead and Canada. Except that on the Gilead side, it was the Disputed Zone, because Chanceries had never committed enough force to pacify it. Chanceries were wasting good men in places like Chicago, where it did not matter.

Indeed, we'd taken Waterford from other Guardians, them being with Commander Lawrence's household. When Blaine had told them that he was acting as an Eye of God, they had stepped back and we loaded Waterford into our vehicle.

Rather than us beating a retreat back to Gilead's safe confines, Blaine ordered us deeper into the Disputed Zone. He must have known what he was doing. But regardless, he was our Commander and he was giving the orders.

We stopped in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of forest blackness. We got Waterford out of the vehicle, and Blaine took possession of him. He turned to me and said, "No matter what you hear, stay put. I will be all right. Wait here. That's an order."

Ok. Strange. But out there, we were ultimately responsible for Blaine's safety. To hell with Waterford, he'd sold out to the Canadians.

It was when the whistle blew that I told the rest of the guys to 'saddle up'. It was obvious that about 300-400 meters ahead of us, some sort of mob was running and yelling. I saw the beams of bright flashlights which silhouetted the trees.

As it was, they were not hard to find. At first I thought it had been Blaine on the ground, the corpse was fresh and mutilated so as to be unrecognizable.

I got ready to fire on the perhaps 20 women standing around it, they were all covered in blood. I'd just told the guys to get ready, when I heard Blaine's voice from behind. "Belay that," he said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "I want you to meet someone." It's not that he actually pushed me closer to the corpse, but if he was trying to introduce me to Fred Waterford, I thought that Blaine was a little late for that.

One of the women, herself covered in blood, sauntered up to Blaine. With God as my witness, her hand settled into his. They stood there like high school sweethearts, surveying their handiwork on the ground in front of them.

Me, not knowing what else to say, looking at Waterford I said, "Now that's just pitiful."

Me, I have no memory of what happened next, until waking with Blaine above me in the hospital.

What Blaine had said was that I had to work on my tag-lines "You'd had June Osborne on your side," he'd said, "You had! Except when you said to her, 'now that's just pitiful'."

I had not remembered that, nor had I remembered 'June Osborne', whoever she was.