THE DUTY CREW

“Unzip your bags.” Holcomb Pellagra motioned Rippon Norduk and Herman Dingle to open their gym bags and get ready. “Remember the plan. Just throw the shit at the side windows. Not the front windows.” Pellagra removed his right glove and reached in to palm the filled balloon. Early that morning the trio had mixed the concoction of powdered cow manure and wallpaper paste and poured it into a large 30 gallon water cooler bottle. The large-lipped balloons easily filled by gravitational force. It still was a messy job and they spilled the foul stuff as they tied off the balloon necks. The wallpaper paste would cause the fecal mix to stick to the windows of the bus.

The buses’ sirens drowned out any dialogue from the poster bearers. The 5-mile per hour momentum of the bus, the flashing blue lights, and the emerging four MP’s pushing the gate open deterred anyone from stepping in front of the Fort Dix vehicles.

“Let ‘em have it.” Pellagra signaled to Dingle and Norduk. The trio proceeded to hurl their bovine diarrhea-filled balloons at the side windows of each bus. They motioned the press cameras and the TV cameras to capture their shit-smearing efforts.

A total of 47 fecal missiles were directed at the sides of the buses in rapid succession. As soon as Pellagra let one loose he fired another and another in perfect time with his two conspirators. Pellagra and Norduk were on the right side of the moving bus where most of the TV and Press people were poised. Dingle was on the left side. The news cameras and TV cameras and their crews followed close in to the action. They were literally right next to the catapulters–which was too bad for the entire protesting group.

The environmental temperature of below freezing had influenced the viscosity of both the balloon container and its contents. The elasticity of the rubberized balloon material had changed. Each balloon struck its targeted bus window but did not burst over the glass. Instead each globular container behaved like a hypodermic syringe. When the balloon hit the window it was like a plunger of a syringe impacting to extrude its contents in the opposite direction. The forward momentum produced a backward momentum but the rubber stuck to the window and the rebounding gelatinous fecal compound escaped its balloon confinement toward the placarded mob and the expectant media. A brown, pudding-like amorphous blivet of wallpaper paste and cow-shit spread like spackle over the protesters who had gotten close to the bus to wave their placards at the windows.

Some of the activists ducked when they saw the projectiles in the air. Others ran away when they saw the extruded brown pudding rebounding from the windows and sides of the air-evac bus. The news personnel extending their microphones to capture the vocal cacophony and their accompanying camera crews were in direct line-of-fire from the flying crud. Equipment, vehicles, eyeglasses, camera lenses, clothing, and posters became layered in manure.

“What is this shit?” A CBS newscaster shaking the brown stuff from his microphone yelled while looking into the camera.

“I think that’s exactly what it is, chief.” The cameraman had a large brown snowball of the stuff on his shoulder. “It sure smells like it.” He picked off the gelatinous mass which still had a piece of intact balloon on it and dropped it to the ground.

“Oh my God. No. Stop this.” Drezella Fusten was appalled. This was not part of the plan. “This is disgusting. We are not a part of this,” She yelled to the news media. “Iona Dell does not support this action.” She tried brushing the ooze from her coat but only managed to spread it like butter on bread. Others were grabbing clumps of snow to cleanse their coats, gloves and hats but to no avail.

The MPs closed the main gate right behind the second bus and gazed at the now disorderly smelly brown splattered-group. The signs were down and almost everyone was discarding their outermost garment.

“Put all the top clothes in one pile.” Pustacia was primarily directing the Iona Dell faction. “Then get in the bus. We’ll get a change of clothes and come back after lunch.”

“What the fuck happened?” Dingle was bewildered. Everything had happened so fast. The buses were upon them and then into the hospital compound in less than 30-seconds. In that small timeframe the shit literally had hit the fan.

“Hanoi practically guaranteed the formula would get results.” Pellagra was angry and disgusted. He peeled his coat off and threw it on top of the pile with the Dell team’s contaminated garments. “Let’s get inside the car after we get the shitty coats, gloves and boots off. We need new clothes and we have to contact the Hanoi advisor. The next bus load of air-evacs is coming in at 1500.”

All the press vehicles and their crews disappeared. The guards at the main entrance guardhouse looked at the mess. What formerly had been white snow mounds bordering the entryway were now patterned in a Guernsey white-and-brown that was an appropriate description since the coloration was from cow shit. The guards at the main gate, however, did not know this.

“Damn.” Sergeant Stibbit surveyed the area. “That’s Navy property. We have to get it cleaned up before the visitors start coming in for the Christmas Lunch. Guerra, call the Buildings and Grounds Duty Crew.

“Jess Sergeant.”