We near the spot we have toiled at the past few days, and are given orders by Tarnus before our boots reach the ground. “Boys found a submerged ambulance that must have been abandoned since the first day, I need a few of you to clear it out. Bring back any intact supplies to add to Motor later.”
Blake tells Alex and me to go deal with it. We crawl over piles of rubble leading up to a part of the freeway that has collapsed, dragging shovels and cutting tools with us. We find the ambulance, broken apart and halfway submerged into the collapsed overpass, and its interior supplies strewn about the brick and mortar.
Alex reveals a large potato sack. “Guess we just fill it up then.”
“Don’t know what else we would do.”
We get to work digging away the rubble and trash to find salvageable medical supplies. Most of it unused dress kits, morphine, and DT or Buzz chemsack refills. A horrible odor attacks my nose. Alex and I both look at each other. I dig away more at a pile I was working on inside the back of the ambulance and the smell grows. I remove a crushed metal cabinet door, and a face stares at me from underneath it.
“What the fuck!” I step back.
“What is it!?” says Alex.
We look into the ambulance at the thing. It is actually only part of a face, stuffed into a bag of other pieces of flesh floating about in a light green liquid.
“Must be where they put all the amputated limbs and random body parts they found,” says Alex.
But I’m hardly listening. The face—or half face, only one eye and part of his mouth that is floating about in the bag of gore and blood—stares at me. I have to look away. I sit against the side of the ambulance. My hands tremble. I can’t breathe!
“Peter, Peter!” Alex shakes me.
I cough and take a breath. “What?”
“Are you alright?”
“I just need a minute, okay. Wasn’t expecting to see that.”
“Alright. I’m going to take the bag back, it’s full.”
Alex leaves and the anxiety comes back. It starts at my shaking hands then moves up my arms. It invades my chest and I can’t breathe again. I fall over heaving. I crawl near the back of the ambulance. What do I do? I haven’t felt like this since the assault onto the city. I go into the ambulance—I need something. I need it now! My vision goes blurry. I am crying. I can’t breathe still. I press the control panel on my forearm to give me DT. Nothing happens—fuck, I forgot they disconnected our chemsacks!
I grab a pouch of DT capsules. I find a syringe. I stick it into the small pouch and pierce one of the capsules. I suck its contents out and inject myself through my bluest vein. A rush of dumbness takes over. I feel like I am on a cloud. Whiteness surrounds my peripheral forcing me to close my eyes for a second. I sit sprawled out against the ambulance as my conciseness comes back to me. In moments I am calm, breathing again. I am blissfully tranquil.
I’ve never done DT sober before. The cord to my neck distributor that connects it to my chemsack has been disconnected since we have been here, with there being no combat activity to warrant it hooked up. But even so, I couldn’t shoot up through it anyway as they would know I did so unordered, leading to punishment. But this way, they would have no idea.
God I needed this. What was I even worried about?
“There you go my little warrior.”
“Who’s there?”
“Peter!” says Alex, returning.
I pocket the pouch and needle. “Was that you?”
Alex comes around the corner of the caved in ambulance. “That just yelled your name? Yeah.”
“No, before that.”
“Before what? I just got here.” He looks around, then pulls out a stick of jerky and bites it. “You alright now?”
I get up, but it feels like I just jumped, shooting high up into the sky where my mind was moments ago—it feels amazing. “Never better.”
He takes another bite. “Good, let’s finish this and get out of here.”
PART II
XVI
“Peter stop!” giggles Serena. She is on the bed pushing away at me with a pillow. I jump on top of her, grabbing the pillow and hitting her playfully with it. I am full of bliss. Finals have just ended, and Serena has invited me over to her parent’s house when they left for the weekend. Our relationship is getting stronger. I continue to toss the pillow back and forth at her as she laughs. The pillow flies pass her face covering it, then when the pillow passes over again and I look down at her it’s the mutilated face of the marine I had fallen into during the assault. I jump back from his twitching eyes and tongue that pokes out widely to the side.
“What the fuck is going on!”
There is no response. The bedroom turns black then morphs into Professor Martin’s classroom from college. I stand before his desk, the paper with the quote he showed me reappearing again. “It’s just an illusion, an illusion we are all born into, society, class, war, hatred,” repeats a harmonious voice. The paper turns into that awful face and seizures about on the desk.
“Get away!”
Blue combat helmets, with the white circle of a unified world on the front and UN stamped on the sides, begin to fall from the ceiling like rain and fill the room. All of them riddled with bullet holes and blood stains. The desk is overturned by the helmets as they relentlessly crowd the room. I try for the door but it won’t open.
“Just an illusion,” continues the voice.
Next I run for the windows and bang against them with my fists. They won’t break. I shuffle through the helmets and grab a chair, and smack with all my might against the glass, but the window still won’t break. The helmets are up to my waist now! Out of breath I drop the chair. The scenic landscape of the college outside transforms into the battlefield for Jericho. Endless fields of the dead and dying in the assault wail and cry at me. I see the little girl running, followed by Julian. He runs after her as ruined buildings appear on each side of them and the chase turns into a maze of alleyways.
“Julian no! They’ll kill you!” The helmets are up to my chest now. Their cold metal frames crush my body that it is almost impossible to breathe.
Hands, blood stained and some missing fingers pop out of the buildings as Julian chases her. They are the multitudes of raised hands on the battlefield crying for help—the hands I was told to ignore.
The girl is now at that familiar street from a few days ago. White cheery trees release their petals into the air as Julian talks to her. Herculeans start firing and he falls screaming in anguish. His arm stretches out towards me in the classroom alongside the dozens of other hands. My vision zooms in on his fingers. I can’t breathe and my vision begins to go dark—the helmets are almost to my neck! In Julian’s hand is the alien necklace. I look up at his face—but it has changed to that same Herculean from Tionem. Its blue eyes gripping me in its stare, its face no different in emotion for help and mercy than Julian’s was.
Then all the hands point at me.
“It’s only an illusion, race, species, war.”
The Herculean’s face turns into a horrifying black owl that flaps towards me, and I fall backwards into the helmets.
“GO AWAY!”
I feel something frisking me. The hands pop out through the helmets grabbing me—dragging me deeper into the helmets.
“Stop!”
“Wake up from your delusion. Save us!” cry the hands and helmets. The pile reaches over my head and I start to suffocate.
I rise from my cot sweating heavy and gasping for breath. Isaac stumbles about as he turns to see what’s happening. “Are you okay?”