An explosion ended the near fatal rain. Hart looked up. A soldier — oblivious to the machine gun’s checkmate — had panicked and sprinted by. A frightened recruit had set off a mine that had killed the wily veteran behind the gun and saved Jim Hart’s life.
No one moved down below. At least, almost no one. A muffled groan and thrash drew Hart’s attention. One soldier playing dead held his hand over his legless comrade’s mouth. The maimed man’s pain was too great, however, to be held in by his friend. They struggled for a moment, then Hart saw the friend make a cutting stroke across his wounded comrade’s throat. The moaning and thrashing ended. Hart had found yet another Chinese combat veteran.
He switched his M-16 to “Semi” and aimed at the man’s pelvis. Dead men are easy to care for. It’s the permanently crippled that tax enemy resources. Pow! Hart’s rifle boomed. A sound — like a siren winding up to full volume — told Hart unmistakably that he had a hit. The man’s screams with every breath that he took added to the backdrop of the scene’s noise.
When Hart occasionally drew fire from a rifleman, he would launch a grenade. When a man broke and ran, a three-round burst brought him down if Hart was fast enough to beat the mine that would quickly trip. The number of survivors dwindled.
More out of fear of a gunship than either mercy or the lack of targets, Hart disengaged and scampered down the reverse slope of the ridge listening to the wails of the hopelessly wounded. For after that first man, all of his shots had been aimed at the helpless, prone men’s pelvises.
The only sentiment that Hart could muster in reply to the chorus of rising and falling screams was “Fuck you!”
Despite the confined space of the fighting hole and the contortions necessary to fit her body into it, Stephie drifted ever closer to sleep.
“Wanta send your father a V-mail?” Becky Marsh asked Stephie.
“I’m trying to sleep,” Stephie snarled, lying on her side and facing away. She wore her helmet and kept her eyes closed the entire time. The blanks began appearing in her mind again.
“Did you have a boyfriend?” Becky Marsh asked.
“Shut the fuck up, Becky, Christ! Why are you here?”
“Ack told me to bed down in your hole,” Becky replied.
“Why?” Stephie lamented aloud.
“He said it was to keep you from getting raped,” Becky answered.
“You? Keep me from getting raped? Hah!”
“Why are you so mean?” Becky asked, sounding hurt. “So now you’re saying that you’re better looking than me, too?”
“What?” Stephie whined, raising her hands and rubbing her temples. “What are you talking about?” she said.
“Knock it off!” they both heard demanded in a whisper from a nearby hole.
Stephie’s head ached right behind her eyes from lack of sleep. She rubbed her eyelids too.
Becky whispered, but with a combination of anger and tears in her voice, “You come in here from this, like, totally great life, and you’re smarter, and you can keep up with the men. You’re just better! But, but, but,” she faltered, “but so now you’re saying you’re better looking than me, too? Jeeze!”
“I am not saying that! Are you ripped? Where’d you get that from?”
“I said Ack put me here so they’d rape me first, but you’re just so positive they’d rape you instead! Well, let me just tell you something! They look at me, too!”
“They look at every woman! They’re guys! Now would you please just shut up!”
Becky began whimpering annoyingly. Stephie rose onto her forearms. Becky’s well-lit face was fixed in a pout. The tiny video displays flickered off tears in the corners of her eyes. “You’re out of your fucking mind,” Stephie said, collapsing in a heap. For an instant she thought Becky might just fall silent. Stephie’s anger faded the closer she drew to sleep.
“So do you have a boyfriend?” a wide-awake Becky Marsh asked.
Stephie said nothing. After a while, she heard a rustle of fabric. Becky, Stephie registered, raising her hands to return the tiny speakers to her ears.
Stephie had lived her high school years wearing earbuds like the ones dangling from Becky’s commo gear. She’d worn them, too much for some, apparently, she remembered with shame and horror. She’d been lampooned at a senior party when her friends didn’t know she was listening. Something about her always saying, “Huh?” and removing the buds in her ears whenever anybody said anything to her. The memory of the ridicule woke her up and pissed her off. Like everything else, however, her ire quickly sank into the swamp of fatigue.
Her stepdad was a good engineer, she now realized. Their house’s A/V system was zoned room by room, and Stephie ruled the bandwidth within the four walls of her bedroom.
She’d once been listening to music — at sixteen, two years ago — when Conner had opened her bedroom door unexpectedly. He must have knocked, and she hadn’t heard it. She hadn’t even known he was coming over. When their eyes met, he had nodded, and ringlets of hair — each tight bundle of strands tied at the end — had bounced in a very cool way. He’d been seventeen and tanned. He had been at that moment — with that look — exactly the person to whom she’d been first and most attracted.
In that moment, everything had been perfect. She’d been in her house. In her room. Her favorite song was playing right at that very moment. Life was good. With practiced expertise she slung her silver-plated, Cartier-imitation control stick — from where it dangled on a bracelet on her wrist — straight into the palm of her hand. She thumbed the volume on her preprogrammed play list lower, and rose to her knees on the bed to kiss Conner on the lips. They both grinned, their teeth clanked, and Stephie drew away laughing.
“So? How was Dorkstadt?” she asked
“It was basketball camp,” he whined. “Can’t you just call it that? I mean Jeeze! You’ve been to every soccer camp in the south!”
“Yeah, but soccer’s cool.”
“Oh, yeah?” came Conner’s retort. He arched his brow and morphed from being pissed, to reaching into his pocket, to trying to hide his smile. “You wanta see cool?” he asked, retrieving his garish purple control stick from his pocket. But Stephie hit hers first. “Oh, Steph, Jesus! Just let me just play it for you!” he whined again. “You’re such a control freak!”
“I am not!” she replied sternly, offended by the comment. “You’ll purge my video cache!”
“I told you I could fix it so it didn’t do that.”
“So could I, jock-boy,” Stephie replied with razor wit that beamed straight over his head. “System,” she said, not to Conner but to the round plastic node that protruded from her room’s multimedia outlet, “transfer video cache to personal drive.”