Fleet Hospital. Anne Duquette Marie

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СКАЧАТЬ The assembled students, sweating in heavy green cammies, black boots and starched covers, tried to ignore the humming of Admin’s air-conditioning outside their barbed-wire fences and guarded gates. Judging by the looks on their faces, Jo decided they were failing miserably. She knew she was.

      Air conditioning existed for the staff’s administration computers only and the few staff personnel lucky enough to work in the regular buildings. Typewriters were used in the Fleet Hospital’s actual training area, and the frigid air wasn’t needed there. Everyone not in FHOTC’s Admin building, from instructors and students to civilian guests like her, sweated. Their only relief was drinking potable water outside the huge tent “hospital” that served as their classroom. No soda, soft drinks or pop, depending on one’s regional vernacular. In Jo’s case, it was a Midwesterner’s “soda.” She’d kill for one right now. No such luck. She was stuck inside the compound, sweating and waiting for the training exercise’s first “casualties.”

      Jo had been admitted onto the marine base as an Associated Press reporter. However, the credentials she had were as phony as her pen name. If she was lucky and able to write a decent story, instead of her usual tabloid trash, she just might get away with what she hoped was the last lie she’d ever have to tell. Face it, tabloid reporters were pretty much professional liars—if you considered the lousy substandard pay she received for her articles “professional.” But so far, she hadn’t found even the hint of a real story at Fleet Hospital.

      I’ll never get a decent job with a decent newspaper at this rate. She hadn’t managed to get an interview with the Commanding Officer, a Captain McLowery. Not yet, anyway. AP rarely bought feature stories without a diversity of interviews. In this case, that meant officers and enlisted, high ranks and lower ranks, men and women, and people of varied ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, an interview with the high-ranking McLowery wasn’t happening so far, despite a quick conversation with him earlier in the day.

      Not needing to worry about the muster, Jo stepped back into the shade and consulted her notes as the roll call droned on in the blinding light. She had to find a story, so she might as well go where it was cooler and start with some of the low-ranking officers.

      Luckily for her, the CHC—Chaplain Corps—worked inside the hospital, a huge complex of connected canvas tents, which all the students learned to assemble. The hospital air-conditioning operated only in critical areas— Surgery, Intensive Care and the Expectant area, which was what they called the cordoned-off area for those expected to die. Those three sites, especially the latter two, were chaplain territories, she read. Chaplains would be praying over the dead and dying.

      “Nothing like fake blood on bandages to spice up a dull shot,” Jo murmured. She felt for her camera at her side and stayed in the shade as she searched the mustered ranks for the chaplain participating in this exercise. She had a gift for both words and photography—although she rarely needed photos when it came to the tabloids. Celebrity stories used stock shots, and fake stories used computer-generated photos, like those used to show readers supposed alien-human babies born in Roswell basements near Area 51.

      She ought to know; she’d written a series of alien-baby stories herself under her Jo Marche byline. They sold almost as well as Elvis sightings and features on the British royals’ latest affairs—whether they’d actually happened or not. Jo had always wanted to be a nonfiction writer, but for some reason only the tabloids bought her stuff, and that sort of writing could hardly be classified as true reporting.

      She winced at the thought of some of her past work, although she had more scruples than many of her colleagues. She flatly refused to write tabloid trash about celebrities, royals or any real people. But her aliens, ghosts, vampires, zombies and other weird creatures in the midst of suburbia were pure fiction and so, fair game. Those stories hurt no one—except Lori Sepanik and her professional reputation, even if they did pay the bills.

      Hence her pen name, Jo Marche, with the intentionally added “e.” She was an avid reader who’d used books to escape from a poverty-ridden childhood, and Jo March of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women became Lori’s favorite heroine. The fictional Miss March had escaped the world of lurid fiction to become a famous writer. Even as a child, Lori had pretended she was Josephine March, the famous writer. In her version, Jo married the handsome Laurence, even though the pretty younger sister ended up with him in the book, and she vowed to follow Jo March’s example. Sadly, young Lori’s plans for herself hadn’t panned out, and rather than sully the innocent name of the fictional Miss March with trashy tabloid fiction, the adult Lori had added an “e” to her pseudonym, vowing to drop it when she finally became legitimate—as in publishing an AP or UP story. The name change might be slight, but it made her feel…less guilty.

      She’d left her old neighborhood in St. Louis four years ago and moved to Las Vegas, hoping to cover the entertainment news. But not once had she ever been in the right place at the right time with the right “connections” to get to the really big stars. With some college education, a little money and a couple of “you’re almost there” rejection letters to spur her on, she’d moved south from Las Vegas to Southern California. Writing about California’s “four seasons”—earthquakes, droughts, fires and mudslides—helped supplement her income, especially since Hollywood stars tended to be even more guarded than those in Vegas. And San Diego, so close to the border, didn’t make a big deal about people who lived out of their cars in trailer parks, river washes or the interstates’ many “rest areas.” As long as there were no sanitary or trash problems, the police left her—and others living the not-so-glamorous California dream—alone. At least she could shower and keep clean until another sale afforded her enough money to stay at a cheap motel. She hadn’t hit San Diego’s definable rock bottom yet—living on the beaches or in the parks year-round and fishing through trash for redeemable bottles and cans.

      Luckily Jo had talent, determination and, at age thirty-three, enough of her youth plus enough maturity to keep reaching for her star. A Fleet Hospital story might provide her with enough money to go legitimate for a real newspaper and find an apartment where she could live and date like a normal person. Maybe even get married eventually and have a kid or two. She refused to consider herself homeless—just struggling—but a 1968 Chevy Impala back-seat bedroom wasn’t exactly a good place for children.

      Jo had a game plan. No one knew a thing about Fleet Hospitals. No one had written about them, not even the big papers like the Los Angeles Times. Maybe she could get enough material for a features article in Sunday’s nationally syndicated Parade section. With luck, she might be able to get enough info to write a TV sitcom, too. Everyone loved M.A.S.H., the TV show, which was still going strong in reruns.

      So what if the odds were stacked against her? Except for her quick brain, the odds had been lousy since the day she was born. Fleet was better than alien stories; something, anything was needed to feed her creative mind—and her nearly empty bank account.

      She intended to write a piece establishing herself once and for all as a woman going somewhere. A woman with a future in legitimate journalism. Either that, or she’d be stuck composing her next tabloid story: “Shape-shifters locked in guarded Fort Knox vaults. Military denies all knowledge.”

      Right now Jo had everything on the line. Someone had broken into her car and stolen her used but serviceable laptop and the trash bag holding most of her clothes, leaving behind the few dirty clothes she hadn’t washed yet. Another female resident of the trailer park where Jo stayed had almost been raped in the showers; she’d escaped only because her attacker had slipped on the slimy mildew-covered tile. Still, he’d succeeded in getting away before the police arrived.

      Jo now had a limited wardrobe, an empty stomach and a backpack that served as her camera case, suitcase and purse. She discovered that she wasn’t bouncing back from life’s little problems the way she used to. The trailer park was getting too scary, even for a lifelong veteran of trashy СКАЧАТЬ