John sat beside her with his forehead creased by a bullet and closed with stitches, both ears plugged with cotton turned yellow by drainage, and his left cheek peeling and scabbed from flash burns. Both wounds had been received on the same day as Stephie’s — one week earlier — when the Chinese had made it into the main trench. John had played dead when he’d encountered overwhelming numbers of Chinese, who had advanced past him toward Stephie. John had then attacked the Chinese from the rear. The distraction and death of the Chinese troops had saved Stephie’s life, just as Stephie had saved the lives of the rest of First Squad. And while the satchel charge had given Stephie — who was shielded by the collapsed roof of the ballistic shelter — a mild concussion and numerous contusions, it had blown John six feet through the air and punctured both of his eardrums.
Stephie kept a close eye on Animal, who sat along the far wall with a dirty M-60. His original, beloved weapon had been destroyed when it — and Animal’s heavily bandaged left hand — had been shot clean through. He now carried a new M-60 they had scavenged from a machine gun pit. Animal hadn’t even bothered to clean the blood of the dead gunner from the stock. Stephie was worried about Animal’s emotional detachment because they needed his big gun to survive.
Becky was the only one in the bunker with recharged batteries. She got a ration of them from Ackerman every evening. She was their sole source of big-picture intelligence. Despite the fact that she hadn’t once fired her weapon, she had saved their lives several times. Once, when a Chinese flamethrower crew had approached their bunker, she had spotted them on her helmet’s one-inch screens. Her frantic, screamed warnings had sent everyone but Stephon Johnson fleeing from the bunker just in time. Johnson had kept shouting, “I got ’em! I got ’em!” as he fired through the slit at an extreme angle.
The wave of superheated air had rushed from the exit as the bunker had filled with flaming, jellied petroleum. The burst had lasted less than a second. Johnson’s screams had lasted much longer. Stephie jammed her eyes shut at the memory.
“Are you hurting again?” John asked. “You need a painkiller?” She shook her head.
They were now all proficient at the medical arts. Melinda Crane, their medic, had used each of the infantrymen as assistants in every manner of emergency surgery. They had probed massive, open thoracic wounds with their hands and reported the devastation to Crane, who was busy saving another life. They had performed desperate tracheotomies only to find that there were two sources of the awful sucking sounds: the one in the neck that they had seen and the other, unseen, in the chest. They had learned to administer anesthesia into veins that flowed back through the heart and not through open wounds onto the concrete. Almost all of their efforts had been spectacular but unsuccessful attempts to save the lives of their teenage friends.
Spec Four Crane lay curled in the corner facing away from everyone else. Following each tragedy, her flame had burned less brightly. Dark eyes that had once sparkled with life had dimmed. She didn’t want to talk, to get to know you, to accept any kindness or favor from people whose bleeding holes she might soon fail to patch in time. She had withdrawn into a shell to forestall the emotional agony of yet another failed lifesaving attempt.
Dawson was the only one who seemed to have adjusted to this new life, which for the first five days had been near constant combat. He cleaned his M-16 of accumulated grime after each firelight. After sweeps of the trench, he promptly refilled his webbing with grenades in well-ordered fashion. “Any word on replacements?” he asked Becky Marsh.
Becky lay flat on her back with her head propped on a pack watching the army’s version of local TV. “They all got diverted north up to Clark’s Hill Lake. The Chinese broke clean through twice but were so spent they couldn’t follow through and exploit. All our replacements and reserves were committed to fill the gaps.”
“Now how the hell do you know that?” Stephie challenged from across the bunker. “You didn’t hear any of that over the company, or even the battalion video net.” Becky glared back at Stephie. Stephie said, “Are you fucking Ackerman now?”
“Eat shit, you stuck-up cunt,” Becky shot back.
Stephie’s fingers inched closer to the pistol grip of her SAW. Everyone in the bunker noticed. John’s eyes darted between Stephie’s face and her hand with his brow knit in reproach. Sergeant Burns was the squad leader. Stephie — now a corporal — was his lone fire team leader. It was their job to tamp dissension among their thoroughly dispirited troops.
First Lieutenant Ackerman appeared in the bunker’s entrance. “Pack it up,” he said, “We’re pullin’ back.”
“We’re bein’ relieved?” Dawson asked.
“No. We’re pullin’ back,” their platoon leader repeated.
“You mean we’re abandoning this line?” Stephie almost shouted. She rose to look through the blackened firing slit down the hill toward the river. There were over two hundred destroyed hulks of Chinese assault vehicles frozen in every imaginable repose of death. And there were thousands upon thousands of contorted and bloating bodies. When the wind shifted and blew up the hill, everyone tied kerchiefs scented with shaving lotion to their faces. “It’s totally quiet! There’s no pressure at all! Why the hell are we giving ground!”
“Stephie…” John began in a voice that sounded designed to soothe the demented.
“No!” she snapped. “This isn’t right! We fought our asses off for this goddamn line! We can still hold it! They’ve thrown everything they’ve got at us and we…!”
“The line broke,” Ackerman interrupted with a hoarse shout, “up at Clark’s Hill Lake. We’re bein’ flanked. We got trucks meeting us on the road down in fifteen minutes. Get your gear and be there waiting in ten.” He turned and left.
Everyone rose to stuff their packs with gear. “Those National Guard bastards in the 40th!” Stephie groused, wincing with pain at almost every movement of her neck. “Pro’bly cut ’n ran when it got too tough.”
“They took a hell of a beating,” John commented in a low voice. “And if they did run, they’re all dead now.”
“You can stay here if you want, Roberts,” Becky suggested sarcastically.
Stephie turned and shouted, “Yeah! I do wanta stay here!” John restrained her as she screamed as loud as she could. “We’ve gotta stop them somewhere! Why not here?” Her voice was painfully loud inside the bunker.
“Because they’re flanking us,” John reasoned. “They’ll surround us, pound us, then kill us.”
Suddenly, Stephie didn’t care anymore. She pulled herself free of John’s grip and haphazardly crammed gear in her pack, oblivious to the pains from her wounds. Oblivious to everyone and everything. Her mind a blank. John knelt beside her. She looked up at him, and she whispered to him, “No more painkillers. I don’t want any more.” He looked piercingly at her, then nodded in agreement. She was too close to the edge, and the drugs made it worse.
As they exited the bunker, all touched the names inscribed in concrete, even Dawson and Crane whose names weren’t included. Stephie lingered — her fingertips brushing across the names of the men and women who had died in bunker 9G — but she felt nothing for them. No more painkillers, she told herself again.