Chapter 1

I just couldn't leave well enough alone. Duty had always been important to me, and tonight was no different.

I looked at the white Econoline van. It was parked beside the dumpster behind the Noble Roman's pizza parlor where I worked. I thought that I heard a muffled voice from the van and saw that it was moving a bit; as if someone were shifting their weight inside of it.

I walked toward the van intending to discourage the occupant from trying to sleep here tonight. I figured that was what was going on, but the trash truck was due in the morning and the van was parked too close to the dumpster. I didn't need the hassles that would bring.

I'm Mark Reynolds, night manager for Noble Roman's pizza parlor and 2nd year engineering student at Purdue University. I enrolled here after a tour in Vietnam as a flight medic.

The closer I got to the van the more the shaking increased and the louder the sounds got. Maybe I was not about to interrupt a young man getting ready for sleep; but a couple trying to find privacy. Too bad, they should have picked a better place to park. I stopped next to the double side door and slapped my open right hand against the metal three times quickly. I was still holding the broken pizza paddle I used to lift the lid of the dumpster. Both sides of the paddle had broken off leaving a 4 foot ash board with a narrow edge on one end and a rounded knob on the other.

I stepped back from the vehicle to avoid the windowless door opening into me, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but you are going to have to move this van, you are too close to the dumpster." I yelled.

"Who the hell are you? I'll fucking move when I'm done fucking, now get the hell away from here before I fuck you up!"

This guy was very fond of the 'f' word. I stepped back in toward the van and slapped the side three more times. "You need to move now, or I'll have to call a tow truck to move you, at your expense."

The driver had backed his van up against a sign that said this very thing. This time the only response from the van was a growl. The door was suddenly flung open, and a big man with long dark hair and a full beard stepped out of the van. A dark mat of curly hair showed on his chest and belly through his open shirt as he paused to adjust his pants. He looked like a bear wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.

When the door slammed open I had stepped back another couple of steps out of caution. The light coming from the back of the pizza parlor was not very bright, but I was able to see past Mr. Grizzly well enough to show the naked girl lying on the floor of the van. I was also able to see the duct tape on her mouth and the fact that her wrists were fastened to a cargo strap over her head.

I grasped the board firmly with my right hand and shifted my left hand up and further towards the sharp end holding the board diagonally across my body. The big man looked up at me, yelled, and started a charge. There was no thought required as old reactions and muscle memory took over. It was like I was watching from above as the butt stroke developed just the way it had been drilled into me on the hot Louisiana sands of Fort Polk. I punched the blunt end of the board up under his chin, followed with a smash into the face with my weight behind it. As he was falling back I gave him a twisting slash across the neck that backed me up enough to prepare for the final thrust up into the heart. Blood spurted onto me and onto the white van as the big man slowly slid down the side of the van to the ground. The final thrust would not be needed. I had not expected the oven hardened end of the paddle to cut as well or better than the bayonet the movement was designed for.

I made a quick value judgment, and decided to help the victim first. If he was still alive in a few minutes, I would patch up Mr. Grizzly.

I pulled my shirt off as I stepped into the van and the girl's eyes widened as she tried to back up into the side wall, pulling her feet back up against her buttocks.

"Take it easy miss, I won't hurt you." I draped my shirt over her bare chest, realizing as I did so that the shirt was covered in blood. It was probably not the best thing to use, but I didn't have anything else. I stepped back to let her calm down. "I'm going to take the tape off of your mouth first, please be still and I'll be as careful as I can."

She nodded yes, so I reached out to grab the corner of the tape and quickly pulled it smoothly off of her mouth.

"Ow, damnit! I thought you were going to be careful?"

"I'm sorry, but that is the best way to handle it. Are you injured anywhere; is anything broken?"

"I don't think he broke anything. Now please get me loose from this shit."

I reached into my pocket and got out my keys. There was a sharp little knife on the key ring. I opened it and carefully cut the tape holding her wrists together.

"Thank you. I don't know who you are, but I owe you one. Is that piece of shit dead?"

As she was asking this, the girl was pulling my shirt over her head. I looked out at the guy and saw that the blood had stopped squirting and there was a large pool under him. I got out and checked his wrist for a pulse; nothing. "He won't be bothering you again. Be careful where you step, try to stay out of the blood. I'll take you inside the shop; someone should still be here to help you out. I need to call the police."

I took her hand as she stepped out of the van. She reached back inside and grabbed a pair of pink sandals; she dropped them on the ground and slid her feet in. I noticed that her feet were small and tanned, with pink nails to match the sandals. I led her in through the back door, to be met by Penny Shake, one of the girls working cleanup tonight.

"Mark! What took you so long ... and who is this and why is she wearing your shirt?" Penny seemed to get more confused the more questions she asked.

"Penny, please take care of this girl while I call the police. I'm sorry miss, but you shouldn't get cleaned up until after the police see you." She was nodding her head as I walked into the office to call. Waiting for the West Lafayette police to answer the phone I took my first good look at the girl I had rescued. She was short enough that my shirt came down almost to her knees, and plump enough that she was stretching it a few places that I didn't. Her hair was short and bleached, and the heavy mascara on her eyes was streaming down onto her cheeks with the tears she was now crying. The interesting item revealed by her smudged makeup was a line of freckles traveling over her cheeks and nose.

The phone was finally picked up on the other end. I calmly explained to the person who answered the phone that I needed an ambulance and some officers at the Noble Roman's on the levy. I told them that I had stopped a rape in progress and the rapist was now dead. I answered questions for the next ten minutes and heard sirens approaching before I was able to get off of the phone.

I put on the extra shirt I kept in the office before meeting the police at the front door. The next couple of hours were excruciating. The girl, Christine Braddock, had to admit that she was being raped before the police would believe me. I was taken to the police station and Christine to the hospital. At first I was charged with murder, then assault, and then finally at 5am I was released into my father's custody. They had discovered that the man that I had killed was wanted for 5 or more rapes on campus. It was understood that there were always more rapes than were reported.

The hardest part was trying to explain to them that I had not intended to kill the guy, but once I started the bayonet movement I had continued to near the end without thinking about it. I had no way to know that the end of the paddle would cut into him so deeply. I was just trying to disable him. He was so much bigger than I that I wasn't taking any chances and his death was an accident.

All this had happened on a Saturday night, and since the pizza parlor sold beer, it was closed on Sunday. I didn't get out of the police station till almost noon on Sunday. Dad took me back to Noble Roman's to get my car and I followed him across the Wabash River to his house in the north part of Lafayette. I could have lived with my parents while going to school, but I liked the freedom my apartment gave me.

Mom fed me and after a lot of talk and some TV I spent a nearly sleepless night with my parents. I kept seeing the blood dripping down the side of the white van intermingled with the terrified face of the young girl and flashes of jungle and napalm. The comforting feel of my old room and knowing that my folks were just across the hall helped keep a bad night from becoming horrific.

I didn't go to school on Monday; I just couldn't face the fake hippies populating the college yet. When I walked into work Monday night, the owner was there. From his attitude I thought that I was going to be fired, until his wife told him that if he fired me, she would be gone as well.

"Take it easy Marsha; I was just pulling his chain for making such a mess out back. The police towed the van away, but that fat bastard bled out what looked to be gallons and we had to bleach it all down. I'm just glad that you were on duty Mark; I don't know what I would have done in your place, but probably not what you did. You can take a couple of days off if you want to; I know that had to take a lot out of you."

"That's okay John, I'd just as soon work. If the fool had just parked far enough away from the dumpster, I would have probably left him alone. Well, anything special going on tonight?"

"No, just a normal Monday; I'll get these accounts finished and be out of your way soon. Have a good night, and thank you again."

I went ahead and did the normal business. Most of the staff looked at me funny, but I was used to that. Most folks knew that I had been in Vietnam and the fact that I had been a medic didn't keep many of the kids at Purdue from calling me a "baby killer" and a "fascist thug". Maybe this incident would make them think twice before confronting me now.

I was keeping my reaction to killing a man behind thick bars in my mind, it wasn't the first time after all, but it was becoming harder to hold it there. When it finally broke out the reaction was going to be a doozy. I just hoped that I could hold off until Wednesday when I had my appointment with the psychologist at the VA in Indy.

I saw the big bleached area out back when I took out the trash. I had to find a new board to use on the dumpster as the police had appropriated the weapon I had used on the rapist.

By Tuesday, more people had heard about my escapade and there were more funny looks, but a couple of people stopped me to thank me for doing the world a favor.

Most of the staff was back to normal that night. I was sitting back in the corner with Bill Oliver, who worked the cash register, when I heard a small voice behind me, "Excuse me, but are you Mark Reynolds?"

I turned, to find a plumpish bleached blond with too much mascara standing behind me. "Yes I am Miss, May I help you?"

"I brought your shirt back; I couldn't get all of the blood out." She handed me the bright yellow T-shirt with the Noble Roman's logo on it that I had been wearing Saturday night, and looked down at the floor. "I also wanted to thank you for saving me. He really hurt some of the other girls when he had time, and he had just started with me when you interrupted him."

"I'm sorry Miss, Christine, isn't it?" She nodded, "I didn't recognize you, and no thanks are needed, besides, you already thanked me that night. I was just protecting myself; you don't owe me anything."

"Bullshit!"

"I recognize you now."

"Oh shut up. I saw you when that bastard opened the door, and you were backing off, you weren't going to get in a fight. Then you saw me, and that stick you were carrying snapped up. It was like someone flipped a switch. You stepped in and that stick moved up, and I have never seen anyone move that fucking fast. The next thing I know asshole is falling and you are stepping into the van and taking off your shirt, at first I thought that you were going to fucking rape me too, and then you put the bloody goddamn thing on me, covering my tits. I could be your slave for life, and never pay you back for what you did."

"Please believe me Christine, you owe me nothing. I just wish that I had gone out sooner so you wouldn't have been hurt at all."

"Wrong bucko, we do owe you, and we pay our debts." I looked beyond Christine and noticed another girl standing there. She was taller and wider than the blond, with dark hair cut short, wearing a sleeveless plaid shirt, and cutoff denim shorts with hiking boots. Oh shit, it's her butch girlfriend. "Now what night are you off work? We're going to take you out and reward you, one way or another."

"I'm sorry Miss?" I looked questioningly at the second girl...

"Shannon, Shannon McKensie, I'm Christine's roommate."

" ... McKensie, I am off tomorrow, but I have an appointment and plans to spend the evening with my folks. If you really want to do something, come on over to my place Sunday." I pulled over a napkin and wrote down my address, "Here is where I live. Come on over and bring some kind of veggies or salad, I'll supply the beef and beer. You can ask some friends along if you like. We can talk then. For right now, I need to get back to work. Thank you for bringing back my shirt, but I can't wear it here again. Why don't you keep it as a reminder that you survived, that he didn't win."

I handed the shirt back to Christine, and took my dishes back behind the counter. I had just enough time to go into the office and take my pills. On my last mission in 'Nam 3 rounds from an AK-47 had taken out my stomach and several feet of colon. The plastic replacements required alcohol and several enzymes to be introduced to my system after meals in order to aid digestion. I usually did this in the office to avoid curious stares. When I came back out, the girls were gone.

The next day I went over to my folks' house and Dad drove me to my appointment. I had been seeing a shrink monthly for about a year to help with the stress left over from my experiences in a war zone. I could have driven myself, but some of the sessions affected me enough to make driving home problematic. This was one of those sessions. The Doc almost had me admitted for the night. The biggest problem was that I had acted solely on instinct and muscle memory. The doc finally talked to my father and got him to agree that I would stay with them tonight; he said that it was important that I not be alone.

The rest of the week passed quickly. Neither one of the girls showed up at the pizza parlor, as I had half expected them to. I bought a bunch of hamburger to make into patties and some hot dogs, as well as charcoal, buns, and fixin's. I had a grill out on my patio and my dad had taught me all he knew about grilling, so I was all set. If the girls didn't show up, the supplies would last me for a few weeks.

Sunday morning I got up early and went to the pool for a good hard swim. I had found that Sunday mornings gave me the most privacy at the pool. That meant that I didn't have to spend quite so much of my time explaining my scars to children. My abdomen looked like a road map with three large cities. I was glad that Charley used the 7.62 copper jacketed rounds, because they went through me without the tumbling that the M-16's 5.56 rounds did. The exit wounds on my back were just puckered scars instead of the big holes that would be left by our ammo. The fourth bullet that hit my left thigh had dug out a trench that only gave me occasional twinges now. I really didn't mind talking to the kids, but it did take away from my exercise time and often the mothers were not pleased with my stories. Some of them seemed afraid that I would go crazy and hurt their children. My parents told an entirely different story about the reaction people had to them when they got home after World War two. Both of my parents had been in the Army.