“Got any of this?” I show the young native boy my chemsack, aiming his eyes to the label marked DepressTabs.
“Sorry.”
That’s all they fucking say when they don’t have something, or don’t understand what we want. “Listen.” I wave two paychecks before him. The lead headlight of my unit draws farther away. “I pay double.”
“Sorry.”
Fuck. I leave to catch up with the patrol.
The nightmares stay.
One day, I am alone on sentry in a foxhole as the unit piles out for a routine patrol. “You gotta get back to her, Peter.”
I take my helmet off to bat away the insects. My head hurts—always with the hurting! “I can’t.”
A bag spills over into my foxhole from a strong wind. I flip over the flap covering the satchel side, it’s the medical bag.
“You gotta get her.”
I open the bag. Dozens of morphine capsules line the interior.
We haven’t seen a fight in days, they won’t need these. I grab one and a syringe, and lie against the foxhole as I shoot up. My body stiffens, but the soreness goes away. I feel dumb and airy. Almost calm. Good enough. And I can just barely hear her through the wind that plays with the leaves…
There you go my little warrior. There you go.
Cloud? Cloud!
Only the wind…
The nightmares remain—because Cloud, you only come here and there. Never when I need you!
Another day, we are all summoned by Blake and begin a routine patrol; this time though, there is believed rebel activity. I am fucked. I was able to convince Tommy to let me carry the med bag. Our patrols normally rotate with two med bags, one for outgoing and one for base. I’ve kept control of base bag—the nearly empty one—for the past few days now. But now that we are all heading out, both bags are in action with us. I don’t know how I’ll pull off explaining the bag half empty when it comes to opening it. I’ve been able to buy morphine from the village boy instead lately, but that doesn’t change the fact I have too much missing here for a simple write-off.
Vance is the other carrier today, and I try to stay close to him that way when need be, it won’t be suspicious if he reaches the casualty first.
“Private Peter!” My neck hair shoots out.
“Yes, sir!”
“Why are both my medics near each other? One grenade you are both gone. Make me a goddamn sandwich now!”
I move to the rear while Vance is second to front.
The particular path we take today leads us into an agricultural zone. The jungle is cleared back a hundred meters on each side of the road by the natives to grow their nuts and rice. A dike runs parallel on both sides as well, the dirty water trickling along a few centimeters high. Dmitry, our field engineer and explosives specialist leads in the front with his IED detection robot. The robot is a four wheeled, waist high, surveyor platform that scans the terrain for irregularities that would suggest recent digging activities to place a bomb. As we move along some more, the robot’s rear arm shoots up signaling it has found something of concern. Dmitry raises his arm and we kneel on each side of the road, rifles raised. My barrel tip follows a puff of humming insects to my side. Die, little alien bastards. You traitorous rebel sympathizers. For what else could they be? They attack us day in and out, requiring us to take continuous medication to repel any alien pathogen they might harbor. Isaac likes to say the Herculeans dropped them off before they arrived as a pre-invasion to the real one.
“Checking it out,” says Dmitry. The robot goes forward, placing down small flags with its extended arm onto parts of the road it has designated as potentially dangerous. A slight tingle resonates inside of my belly. The morphine—Cloud sorry, she hates being named incorrectly—is keeping me well, but I haven’t had Buzz in a long time. All I remember, is that the last time I had it, it made me do something terrible, but at the same time, it was also the last time I ever cared about anything. It gave me purpose, a sense of direction—didn’t I use to have that, even before the war too?
You still do Peter, with me.
Cloud? Is that you?
Yes. Now hush my little warrior.
I look around to get whatever it is off my mind since the insects have stopped entertaining me. I view the rows of neatly created dirt mounds growing nuts on the side of the road. Every five rows, there is a slightly larger gap, probably so the farmers can walk through the irrigation easily. One of these bigger gaps is about a few meters away from me, and I notice a small wooden stake sticking out of the dike near the gap. From the center of the stake, betrayed by the sunlight, is a glistening metal wire that runs off into the jungle. I lean off the road over the dike to get a better view of it. The metal wire also goes inside the ground, directly underneath the road we are on. I look over at the opposite side. Yahir is the closet to where I would need someone to look. Actually, he would practically be right on top of the stake from where he is, if there is one. “Hey!” I call at him, they all look over. “Yahir, is there a stake sticking out in the dike by you?”
He looks over. “Yes, why?”
Before I can talk, Blake looks at the discovery by Yahir, and then runs over to me to see mine. “Shit!” Blake turns to Dmitry up ahead. The robot is far up the path and Dmitry has his explosive removal equipment out for the first flag. “Specialist Dmitry!” Dmitry now on his knees glances back at him. A burst of gunfire grabs our attention. The rounds were fired from down the road a way. The dirt on the road kicks up into little clouds and the robot flips over destroyed and smoking. Dmitry drops his tools and runs back towards us but the road explodes between us.
I fall back, Blake on top of me. “Are you hurt?” he coughs.
“No.” I don’t believe so at least. I am numb from the loud explosion, that annoying ringing in my ears dwarfing everything else.
“Get to cover!” says Blake.
I do the simple procedure of rolling over into the dike right next to me, getting covered in mud as I crawl back up to aim my rife over the road. Our unit lights up the jungle tree line from where we best believe the first burst came from. On the other side of the road I hear screaming and look over. The road where the wire ran under is now a ripped up slit of soft earth. The screaming is coming from Yahir. He is on his side, his arms grabbing Alex and Isaac tightly. Blake kneels before him, then moves out of the way while talking on his radio, and I see why he’s screaming. His right leg is blown off up to the calf, bits of his boot strewn about. Vance reaches him first—thank god.
“Stay in cover!” says Blake. “Stay alert!”
Rommel behind me yells out, “We get Buzz?”
“No! This is a defensive maneuver, you are to keep your ass right there!”
Isaac and Alex carry Yahir as Dmitry follows, and Blake throws a green smoke canister farther down the road.
“This your fault!” says Yahir at Dmitry, foam in his mouth. “You failed. You—agh!—you skipped that mine on purpose Russian filth! To kill me!”
“No! I swear! Sorry!”
Blake pushes Dmitry away after whispering in his ear. Dmitry goes and sits crisscrossed on the side of the road near the dike, crying quietly into his hands.
“You Russians take everything from me! You are real enemy!”
Louder explosions follow next that causes everyone to duck. But we quickly discover it is only battalion artillery hitting the road up away. Huge mushrooms clouds of dirt and smoke rise into the air as trees are flung about. We stopped firing into the jungle a while ago, but I guess Blake wanted ordinance for full effect. The hum of the little bird coming for Yahir carries in through the exploding salvos. Rommel sits by me, kicking away at the water in the dike, causing it to fly about. Some lands on me.