It was a blessing of sorts, Ramada's horrible condition. Branch felt freed by comparison. Now he could dwell on wounds far worse than his own. He laid the navigator across his lap and palmed away the gore and mud on his face.
While he held his friend, Branch listened to the dangling helmet.
'...One, Echo Tango One...' The mantra went on.
He sat in the mud with his back against the ship, clutching his fallen angeclass="underline" Pietà in the mire. Ramada's limbs fell mercifully limp.
'Major,' Jefferson sang in the near silence. 'You are in danger. Do you copy?'
'Branch.' Mac sounded violent and exhausted and full of worries high above. 'They're coming for you. If you can hear me, take cover. You must take cover.'
They didn't understand. Everything was okay now. He wanted to sleep. Mac went on yelling. '...thirty yards out. Can you see them?'
If he could have reached the helmet radio, Branch would have asked them to calm down. Their commotion was agitating Ramada. He could hear them, obviously. The more they yelled, the more poor Ramada moaned and howled.
'Hush, Bobby.' Branch stroked his bloody head.
'Twenty yards out. Dead ahead, Major. Do you see them? Do you copy?'
Branch indulged Mac. He squinted into the nitrous mirage enveloping them. It was little different from looking through a glass of water. Visibility was twenty feet, not yards, beyond which the forest stood warped and dreamlike. It made his head ache. He nearly gave up. Then he caught a movement.
The motion was peripheral. It pronounced the depths, a bit of pallor in the dark woods. He glanced to the side, but it was gone.
'They're fanning out, Major. Hunter-killer style. If you copy, get away. Repeat, begin escape and evasion.'
Ramada was grunting idiotically. Branch tried to quiet him, but the navigator was in a panic. He pushed Branch's hand away and hooted fearfully at the dead forest.
'Be quiet,' Branch whispered.
'We see you on the infrared, Major. Presume you are unable to move. If you copy, get your ass down.'
Ramada was going to give them away with his noise.
Branch looked around and there, close at hand, his oxygen mask was dangling against the ship. Branch took it. He held it to Ramada's face.
It worked. Ramada quit hooting. He took several unabated pulls at the oxygen. Seizures followed a moment later.
Later, people would not blame Branch for the death. Even after Army coroners determined that Ramada's death was accidental, few believed Branch had not meant to kill him. Some felt it showed his compassion toward this mutilated victim. Others said it demonstrated a warrior's self-preservation, that Branch had no choice under the circumstances.
Ramada writhed in Branch's embrace. The oxygen mask was ripped away. Ramada's agony burst out in a howl.
'It will be okay,' Branch told him, and pushed the mask back into place. Ramada's spine arched. His cheeks sucked in and out. He clawed at Branch. Branch held on. He forced the oxygen into Ramada like it was morphine. Slowly, Ramada quit fighting. Branch was sure it signified sleep.
Rain pattered against the Apache. Ramada went limp.
Branch heard footsteps. The sound faded. He lifted the mask. Ramada was dead.
In shock, Branch felt for a pulse.
He shook the body, no longer in torment.
'What have I done?' Branch asked aloud. He rocked the navigator in his arms. The helmet spoke in tongues. '...down... all around...'
'Locked. Ready on...'
'Major, forgive me... cover... on my command...'
Master Sergeant Jefferson delivered last rites. 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son...'
The footsteps returned, too heavy for human, too fast.
Branch looked up barely in time. The nitrous screen gashed open.
He was wrong. What sprang from the mirage were not animals like any on earth. And yet he recognized them.
'God,' he uttered, eyes wide.
'Fire,' spoke Mac.
Branch had known battle, but never like this. This was not combat. It was the end of time.
The rain turned to metal. Their electric miniguns harrowed the earth, chopped under the rich soil, evaporated the leaves and mushrooms and roots. Trees fell in columns, like a castle breaking to pieces. His enemy turned to road-kill.
The gunships drifted invisibly a kilometer out, and so for the first few seconds Branch saw the world turn inside out in complete silence. The ground boiled with bullets.
The thunder caught up just as their rockets reached in. Darkness vanished utterly.
No man was meant to survive such light. It went on for eternity.
They found Branch still sitting against his shipwreck, holding his navigator across his lap. The metal skin was scorched black and hot to the touch. Like a shadow in reverse, the aluminum behind his back bore his pale outline. The metal was immaculate, protected by his flesh and spirit.
After that, Branch was never the same.
It is therefore necessary for us to marke diligently, and to espie out this felowe... beware of him, that he begyle us not.
– RUDOLPH WALTHER, 'Antichrist, that is to saye: A true report...' (1576)
4
PERINDE AC CADAVER
Java
1998
It was a lovers' meal, raspberries plucked from the summit slopes of Gunung Merapi, a lush volcano towering beneath the crescent moon. You would not know the old blind man was dying, his enthusiasm for the raspberries was so complete. No sugar, certainly not, or cream. De l'Orme's joy in the ripe berries was a thing to see. Berry by berry, Santos kept replenishing the old man's bowl from his own.
De l'Orme paused, turned his head. 'That would be him,' he said.
Santos had heard nothing, but cleaned his fingers with a napkin. 'Excuse me,' he said, and rose swiftly to open the door.
He peered into the night. The electricity was out, and he had ordered a brazier to be lit upon the path. Seeing no one, he thought de l'Orme's keen ears were wrong for a change. Then he saw the traveler.
The man was bent before him on one knee in the darkness, wiping mud from his black shoes with a fistful of leaves. He had the large hands of a stonemason. His hair was white.
'Please, come in,' Santos said. 'Let me help.' But he did not offer a hand to assist.
The old Jesuit noticed such things, the chasm between a word and a deed. He quit swabbing at the mud. 'Ah, well,' he said, 'I'm not done walking tonight anyway.'
'Leave your shoes outside,' Santos insisted, then tried to change his scold into a generosity. 'I will wake the boy to clean them.'
The Jesuit said nothing, judging him. It made the young man more awkward. 'He is a good boy.'
'As you wish,' the Jesuit said. He gave his shoelace a tug, and the knot let go with a pop. He undid the other and stood.