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JOHNNY REB
And the Maverick Men
In
‘The Clockwork Atoll’ Part 3.
Character Created by Tim Frady / Story by Wayne Clayton.
As villages go this was nothing more then a dirt road with a handful of roughly made huts. The roofs made of the local reeds which grew out of the sandy soil. And the palm tree timbers were lashed together with hemp rope. As the Mavericks moved onto the dirt street they could see the remains of the islanders last catch of fish still hung out to dry in the sun. The belongings they couldn’t carry with them still laying were they fell.
“Boy this place is a ghost town” whispered Jones as he took a picture or two of the vacant meeting hut at the head of the track.
Silently Johnny Reb glided down to join them.
“Captain I’m hearing something from that hut up ahead. It’s very faint. But I think it’s a heartbeat of some kind”
Captain Travis and Vinnie quickly took up positions, guns at the ready, moving towards the mouth of the hut. They edged closer, all their senses on full alert. With Vinnie covering his back Travis entered the door way his revolver poised for action quickly followed by Vinnie.
Inside they found the source of Johnny’s heartbeat. Tied to one of the poles supporting the roof was a small island dog. Its owners had either forgotten it or had no use for it were they were going. That was a week ago and now it was lying beside an upturned bowl which once contained food. Its ribs were now showing as thin bars down either side of its thorny coloured coat.
“Gee look at the poor guy Capt. Can we take him with us?” Vinnie had grown up on a mountain farm and had a gun dog of his own back home.
Captain Travis turned to Vinnie as he began to break out some of his beef jerky rations for the dog to eat.
“Isn’t babysitting Shutterbug enough for you Vinnie?” Travis said coldly.
“We can’t let the little tyke starve to death Capt.”
Travis scanned the rest of the hut and turned back towards the door.
“Come tomorrow and that won’t be a problem. If you want to help it then put him out of his misery now”
Five years ago Travis would have said the same as Vinnie, but the war had changed things. He had seen too much and lost too many men to have the luxury of feeling emotional about a mutt in a hut. His only concern now was getting from A to B in one piece and having the same number of men that he started with get there too.
Vinnie dusted himself down and stood up shuffling uneasily, He didn’t have the heart to do anything, but finally pulled out his knife and reached down.
Moments later he joined the Captain and the others back out on the street, followed a minute later by the small frail dog. It stopped and briefly sniffed the air, before scampering off to find a trough full of stale water.
Vinnie too sniffed the air. There was something on the breeze which caught in the back of his throat.
“Phew, what’s that smell?”
Now the others too caught the odour.
“Smells like rotten eggs” Said Jones wrinkling his nose.
“It ain’t rotten eggs boys it’s Sulphur” Travis hissed.
He knew the smell well from his times clearing out the tunnels of every damn island from Pearl Harbour to Japan.
“Judging by the wind direction it’s coming from the lagoon.” said Johnny.
“Okay boys lets get to it. I want us to wrap this up before we loose the light.”
And in that one second the mood changed. Now there was danger in the air. And the Mavericks could feel it. Johnny Reb climbed back up into the air, carefully scanning the way a head as he went.
On leaving the village they made their way along a well trodden path which wound its way down towards the distant lagoon. Leaving the shade of the palm trees they emerged onto a wide sandy plateau.
“Boy would you look at that” Gasped Vinnie as he was suddenly confronted with the sight of two dozen Sherman tanks all lined up across the plateau. In between each of them were placed cages with goats baking under the sun.
Shutterbug fired off another few frames of film as the small band silently weaved their way past the abandon vehicles. The quiet was only broken by the bleating of the caged animals.
Up above Johnny looked towards the lagoon and then out to sea. In the distance he saw a vast fleet of ships all anchored off shore. They like the tanks below appeared to be empty of all human life.
The closer they got to the lagoon the more hardware they found staked out on the ground. Broken down jeeps and trucks all looked out to sea. Every now and then a small building appeared, the doors and windows blacked out and nailed shut.
Looking up Travis saw Johnny circle down towards them, flying in to meet them at the top of a ridge overlooking the shoreline and the crash site below.
With a wave of a hand the group all fell to floor and began to crawl towards the edge of the ridge. Even Johnny followed the orders sticking close to Captain Travis’s lead.
Travis was a good man, Johnny Reb had seen him grow into the leader he now was. The Mavericks were a breed apart from ordinary soldiers, most had been battled harden on the beaches of Europe. And the lucky ones had made it all the way through. Travis was the luckiest one of them all. Johnny remembered how on his first mission Travis had been told by some of the guys that he was just some schmuck dressed up as Johnny Reb to entertain the troops. So when he had marched out into battle Travis had raced out after him to try to stop him been killed. Fortunately for him when the machine guns had opened up his canteen had served to stop Travis from been the first kill of the day.
And after five years of fighting he’d somehow kept his dumb luck. No matter how many grenades he’d had thrown himself on to save the men around him all of them had turned out to be duds.
Johnny almost believed Travis had been born with his own special powers which even Travis didn’t know he had. But then all the Mavericks before him seemed to have something which set them apart. Maybe fate had drawn the Maverick Men together.
Still on his belly Travis reached down and pulled out his field glasses. Then with them firmly in his grip he inched himself to the every edge, before finally looking out over the lagoon.
“It’s a damn shame Johnny. Just look at all those ships out there. Once they were the pride of the fleet and now they’re just so much scrap iron. Sitting there like ducks in a shooting gallery waiting for some kid with a B.B. gun to win a prize for his girl”
Johnny didn’t say a word, but he was starting to think maybe that those ghost ships out there and he had something in common. Ever since Little Boy and Fat Man had blown holes in Japan he had noticed a change in the way the Top Brass had dealt with him. Plus he had heard the rumours that they had a new toy to play with hidden out in the desert.
Captain Travis began to scan the shore line and soon found the thing they had came all the way out here to see. Except there was a problem, it wasn’t there anymore. All that was left was a crater the size of a house. There was no wreckage, no twisted metal and no dead little green men. But what there was, was an empty hole with a set off huge odd looking secondary craters making a trail toward a dense outcrop of palm trees running around the far shore line.
“Okay boys looks like it’s skipped the surface and landed in the tree line. We’ve got to go down there and pick out the pieces”, “Let move out”
And with that the Mavericks picked themselves up headed over the top towards the crater.
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Something is going to happen at that crater, but what?
