“But we also have nightmares too.”
“And that’s the worst part. The part that reminds us of the futility of being human. Even in our own minds, where we can imagine whatever we want, we still imagine horrible things. Why would we do that?”
I glance up, her hand rests under her chin, staring at me with a look of muse in her eyes. “If we are going beyond those scientific reasons again, I would say it’s part of the human condition.”
“And part of the human condition is dying. And so we let our own dreams take us down, defeat us, scare us, consume us. We let a fake terror into our minds to hide us from the real ones out here. I mean, I still wake up terrified with nightmares sometimes out on the field. What the hell does that mean? Why am I waking up scared shitless from a fake monster when I am in the middle of a real nightmare every day?”
She stares at me, loss with words, and her expression quickly turning into one of concern. I must be laying my personal shit too heavy on her. She wanted to know.
“I change my mind now. Guess what the real worst part of it all is? I hate sleeping, but out here, all I want to do is sleep. Because even though my nightmares can be more frightening than real life, I know it’s not real. That hey, at least my mind is telling me I don’t belong here. Because, we don’t have nightmares over things we like, or are normal to us, right? So the second I stop having nightmares about this place, is the second I truly died. Not when a bullet hits me, not when I collapse bleeding the last of my blood out there, but when I stop dreaming, the good and bad. That’s when I am dead.”
I look up again. She stares intently at me. Unadulterated eyes of beauty. “Peter…”
I realize my hands are shaking uncontrollably and the coffee cup has spilt over because of it. The fear and panic comes back. The anxiety that crushes my being, that invades from every direction. The horrible images. “I have to go now.” I push my chair back, and walk away quickly holding my hands against my chest. I can’t escape them. They are inside of me. A part of me.
As I walk down the street rapidly, I hear screaming behind me.
“Allahu Akbar!”
What the hell? What is going—BOOM!
I am knocked over from a loud earthshaking noise. All of the car alarms on the street go off. People scream and run away. I crawl towards a lamp and hide behind it. “I need Buzz!” I push my hands to my ears to block the yelling. “Buzz! I can’t fight them without it!” I start cradling my head to escape the screaming and dying. “Somebody! Buzz!”
Oh god, Alison.
I get up and turn around towards the commotion as people push pass me. The café is covered in black smoke, and fire whips out violently from the terrace.
Alison!
I run as fast as I can back. Police cars beat me to the scene. People crawl about begging for help, holding their guts together, like out on the field. “Get back!” says a policewoman, as I try to push past her to the café. More police come and beat me back.
“Get back or we’ll arrest you!” warns another officer.
I squish back into the crowd. “Alison! ALISON!”
Firefighters arrive, charging the smoke. More injured people crawl out of the café. One woman is completely covered black in smut, her right arm missing up to her elbow. In her other hand as she staggers about screaming, is her severed limb.
“Alison!” There is no response. The police force us back farther to make room for the paramedics. Eventually, I turn away. I don’t know where she went. Maybe she wasn’t there.
I find a quiet park away from everything.
This world is too much noise.
I told her my honest feelings. But I stopped short of the other aspect that even I have being hiding from. From what I should have told her—now she’s dead! And that’s why I am with Cloud, why I use the drugs. They don’t work on me like they do on the others. So I take more to try and catch up to the state of mind they’re in, because I can’t handle the reality of it.
I don’t think anyone could.
XIX
Nova Carthago shrinks behind through the port window as our C-130 jet rises higher and higher into the sky. Blake grabs our attention, “Alright. So you all know what has recently happened. Private Peter was near one of the suicide bombings himself. I will let our General elaborate more on the recent events, and on our next detail.” He places a holotablet onto the center hull of the carrier and we lean in to watch.
An exaggerated size of Jack’s face appears, and he gets right to speaking, “At thirteen hundred hours, Muslim terrorist under the authority of Imam Alleto, committed dozens of suicide bombings throughout occupied Coalition territory and allied lands. The attacks were meant to be a counterstatement to his failed arrest. Thirty four hundred hours ago, a spec ops team was set in to bag and grab Alleto for instigating a rebellion against the Confederate City states—our closest ally in the war here—and for massacring allied troops, including posting beheadings of some of the captured operatives we sent in after him online. These videos have been verified as authentic, the fate of the remaining men is uncertain.
“Your task as a returning platoon from leave will be to form up with fellow outfits of your regiment into an assault battalion, where you will lead a siege against Khaf’Jadeed, the capital of the newly rebelled territories. These lands were once the autonomous regions of the northern Confederate States, called Thaanin Filasteen. Now it is under an autocratic theocracy lead by Imam Alleto himself. I don’t need to remind you of the grave offences it creates against the UN Human Rights declaration, or to Party Ideals. Your commanding officers will inform you on any other needed information. Good luck boys, God bless America and the Party.”
We land deep into the heart of Thaanin Filasteen at a recently captured military airbase by allied forces. We form up as a motorized convoy heading straight to Khaf’Jadeed. I never thought I would be fighting humans when I was enlisted. Riding high with Cloud, we continue trekking through the countryside to the siege. It has just finished raining and the ground is slick and muddy. A mess of burning farms and huts greets us. I watch as a group of locals are piled up and guarded by marines on the side of the road, as others torch their shack. The family cries out in protest. I take out Rosa the hawk, and wrap it with an elastic camouflage band around my helmet. It perches on the left side right above my ear. I watch streams of refugees, burdened with their belongings, pass us by on the roadside as our convoy moves the opposite direction near the capital.
We reach the rally point for the battalion, a hastily made base with the capital visible in the distance. The city’s glistening oval white roof tops made of tile reflect the few sun rays breaking through the overcast. It is truly a sight to behold, contrary to the burning countryside we rode through. I see that the battalion has put up barricades and trenches about the outskirts to keep the city under full siege, so that no one can escape.
The Commander of the attack force approaches our arrived group. “Hello marines, welcome to Operation Screaming Fist,” he grins. “We are parking it here for now, Command’s orders till we find out if those sons of bitches really have any more chemical weapons left. If the siren goes off you’re ordered to wear gas masks, and I would recommend biohazard suites as well.” The Commander moves off with his retinue to the next group of marines in the convoy.