A Soldier in Love (9 page)

“Kate, you’re a fucking
genius!” he exclaimed with a huge smile.
 

Michelle rushed to Kate
and gave her a quick hug.

“I mean, it won’t be a
lot but it could be enough to get out of a bind,” Kate offered.

“It will do,” Michelle
replied warmly.

“I’ll fix them tonight.
If The Commander asks we can say yours are broken,” Aaron said decisively.

***

The next day Michelle
awoke to the sound of the screams. She heard it again. It wasn’t just a scream
of fright or shock,
no,
it was a scream of pure agony
and pain.

She jolted out of bed
and quickly threw her uniform on. She ran down the hall with no boots on. Her
bare feet hit the rough concrete floor.

“Aaron? Aaron?” she
called out to him as he was stooped down the hallway by someone.

“Help me,” the voice
called out.

“Michelle,” Aaron was
barely able to get her name out. He had an intensely worried expression on his
face.

Michelle looked down to
see Alex, another soldier who was part of their squad. She hadn’t really talked
to him that much. From the interactions she did have, she recalled he was
always kind. She examined his body; it was bloody and mangled. It seemed almost
though he was covered in blood. His leg was bad, really bad. She could see a
slim white bone protruding from his thigh. Most of all his exposed skin was
bloodied by deep scratch marks. She could almost see his muscle against part of
a piece that had been ripped away. His face was ghost white.

It felt like a dream, a
bad dream.

“Help me get him to the
medic station. Try not to let him talk, he’s got a lot of internal injuries,”
Aaron directed as he wrapped his wounds and hoisted him up on a gurney. Michelle
looked down at the part of the bone that was protruding from his leg. It was
broken, very broken. She looked
closer,
no it wasn’t just
broken; he had lost part of it. He had lost part of his leg. Her stomach turned
but she stayed by his side.

Michelle moved him
towards to the medic station on the gurney and Aaron trailed closely behind
her.

“Aaron,” a voice called
out.

“Aaron, there’s more,”
it was Kate’s voice.

“Go, Michelle. Take
care of him,” Aaron commanded.

“Where were you?” Michelle
asked ignoring Aaron’s prior instructions. She stopped in the hallway. She
didn’t know much about medicine but she was certain that he wasn’t going to
make it; his injuries were just too bad. She had to get information and get it
fast. He was almost dead.

“Trying to make it to
the shuttle,” his words were strained and soft.
 

Michelle tried to apply
pressure to some of his wounds. She wished for anyone or anything that could
help her
take
his pain away. Her hands were quickly
becoming covered in his blood. He was losing more and more. She wasn’t sure
what to do; she had never had any sort of medical training. She wrapped his
wounds as best she could to keep the blood from escaping from his body.
Her own hands and arms becoming bloody in the process.

“Not what you think,
Commander sent us,” he whispered as his frightened brown eyes met her green
gaze.

Her stomach turned.
“Us?
Who
is
us? Do I need to go for
them?”

“Please, Michelle,
please help me,” he said barely over a whisper. She could tell his words were stressed.

“Michelle, it hurts, it
hurts,” he whimpered.

“Alex, it’ll be OK.
You’ll be OK,” she offered softly unsure of what to say or what to do. She
brushed her fingertips over the side of his face affectionately.

“Michelle,” he called
out hoarsely.

“
Shhh
,
Alex, don’t speak. Aaron will be right back with help. We will get you through
this,” she said as soothingly as she could muster.

“No,” he shook his
head. “No, you have to help the others then you have to get out of here,” he
said in barely a whisper.

His body began to shake
and he began to convulse. Michelle toppled on top of him as she held him down
firmly. It was useless; it was though she was holding water in her hands. He
kept slipping away. Just yesterday, there had been a courageous young man with
a strong healthy body. In front of her now, there was a dying bloody frightened
man.

No one deserves this suffering, especially Alex. He
was good and he was kind.

To her relief, he
opened his brown eyes and reached out for her hand. She took his hand within
hers. She thought for a moment their eye contact was meaningful. He gave her
hand a gentle squeeze before he went limp. She could sense it. It was a
distinct sort of feeling that he was now free; his soul had left his body and he
was gone.

God, take my fellow soldier. God, help me avenge him,
she quickly prayed over his body.

“Michelle?” Kate
called.

Michelle looked up to
Kate with tears in her eyes.

“Are there others?”
Michelle asked as she blinked the tears away.

Kate nodded.

“Then I’m going,”
Michelle said running to grab her boots and her rifle.

“No, you can’t go
alone. You’ll fucking die out there. I’m going with you,” Aaron yelled.

Michelle ran back,
stooping down to lace up her boots, her heavy rifle fastened to her back.

She gave Aaron an angry
look. “Look here, doctor, you are staying here. You have to fix these people.
I’m about to blow the fucking head off of whatever just took Alex! He just died
a horrible death and it’s not going to be for nothing!”

She felt the all too
familiar rage shoot through her veins. She gritted her teeth.

Before Aaron could say
anything else Kate intervened. “I’ll go with her.”

“No,” Aaron replied
with widened eyes.

“Aaron, fucking
stop
arguing with us and take care of the wounded!” Kate
screamed at him. It was the first time Kate had ever lost her cool. Michelle
had never heard raise her voice before. It had finally been serious enough for
her to. She was ready to fight, Michelle could tell. She had made the choice
right along with her, they would kill,
they
would not
die today.
 

Aaron shook his head
and retreated. He knew the girls were right. He had his own battle to fight,
right in front of him.

 
“Let’s go now,” Kate replied heaving two
bottles of bleach.

Michelle grabbed the
keys for the Jeep from The Commander’s post which had been unlocked and left in
a disarray
. Her and Kate ran to the Jeep and climbed
in. Michelle put her foot on the clutch and turned the engine. She shifted
gears as quickly as she could as she followed the faint tracks from the other Jeep
that were left in the red sand.

“Get your gun ready,”
she instructed Kate. Kate nodded and got into stance with her finger on the
trigger.

Michelle shifted up a
gear. She silently cursed the Earth Army for having open door Jeeps.

What the hell were they thinking? These things can
just lunge right at us!

Michelle slowed down
again, noticing the Jeep wasn’t
liking
the desert
heat. It was an almost ancient army model. She was surprised it still worked at
all.

Come on baby, come on. Don’t quit on me now,
she silently prayed.

Michelle jumped a
little when she heard a shot. She looked to her side to see Kate aiming at
several molcos hunds. One lunged towards the Jeep.

Those damn things are fast.

Kate shot it directly
in its chest area but the bullet didn’t pierce the skin. It knocked it back for
a second before it lunged again. Kate shot it again, and then again, before the
bullet finally penetrated its thick hide.

“Keep calm,” Michelle
said. She wasn’t sure if she said it more for herself or for Kate.

“I am. I can do this.
We will be OK, we just have to get to the others,” Kate replied.

Michelle downshifted
and the engine hummed as they approached the other Jeep. The molcos hunds
seemed to be retreating from it.
 

“They don’t like the
taste of us,” Michelle said as Kate fired another shot to scare them away.

Most of the molcos hunds
ran off but one stayed. It had a look in its eyes of vehemence.

Kate fired again but it
was too late, the molcos hund was too fast. It had already jumped on the hood
of the Jeep. It
bared
its sharp, knife-like teeth at
them and hissed. It was massive much bigger than the others.
It’s
unmistakable stench overwhelmed the pair.

“Shit,” Michelle called
out pulling the brake. The Jeep lurched to a complete stop and it slid off the
hood only to jump back up on the driver’s side.

The molcos hund’s thick
claws dug into Michelle’s left arm. Michelle winced in pain as it tore chunks
of her flesh off as it pulled back.

This is it,
Michelle’s
mind raced.

Before it could hit her
again Michelle quickly ripped off her cooler pack with her right hand and hurled
it towards the beast

Just then Kate ripped
off her cooler pack as well. She fumbled towards the creature as she was
practically in Michelle’s lap and shoved it its eye. It let out a loud moan
before its skin started to form puss bubbles. It slowly retreated from the
Jeep.

Michelle grabbed a
container of bleach and followed it. She hit the ground running and poured it
on the rest of its body. It tried to claw at her again, but then at last it
died.

It finally died. What the fuck are these things made
out of?
Michelle’s mind raced.

“Hurry, go see if
anyone is alive,” Michelle called out as she staggered back to the Jeep. It was
brutally hot without the cooler pack. Her arm was covered in blood and it hurt
like hell. It felt like the damn molcos hund was still tearing at her flesh
even though it lay there dead.

She looked down to see
the trail of blood she was leaving all around her.

“But your arm,” Kate
cried.

“Go before they come
back. Please just check,” Michelle cried.

Michelle ripped open
her uniform top and wrapped her arm in it. She could see dark red blood coming
through the cloth. She winced in pain. It was hard to tell how much blood she
was losing as Alex’s blood still covered her.

Kate ran over to the
other Jeep and she comes back shaking her head with tears in her eyes.

She climbed into the
Jeep and Michelle approached the other vehicle.

“What are you doing?”
Kate asked astonished that she hadn’t turned around.

“We have to siphon the
fuel,” Michelle said as she scrambled to get the kit. Her blood began to coat
almost everything around her.

“What?” Kate said as if
she was speaking another language.

“We have to do it, I
don’t think there’s enough gas left in this thing to get us back to the launch
zone,” Michelle fretted.

Michelle pulled the
empty gas can from the back along with a piece of hose. It wasn’t clear but it
would due. She knew that the
army always kept one in each
vehicle in case of a situation like
this.

“No, you’re hurt I’ll
do it,” Kate said grabbing the tube and handing Michelle her rifle.