Fade to Black - Proof (25 page)

McIver skidded
around the corner on the far side of the street and pressed himself against the
wall for a moment, his body sagging in obvious relief. It only lasted a moment.
Then he shouldered his rifle again and peered around the corner from his side of
the street, scanning for his own targets to cover the next sprinter. Without looking
over at them he waved an arm at them.

Come on!

Jack slapped
Ballard on the back of the helmet and then he immediately returned back to his
scan of the doorways and rooftops. Ballard weaved across the street much like
McIver had. He stopped once to aim up at something he saw on a roof and fired
his rifle, and then he sprinted again. He arrived at the far corner behind
McIver, grinned, and flashed Jack a thumbs-up.

Holy shit!
This was going to work! Jack realized suddenly that his heart pounded now more
out of excitement than fear.

Almost home!

Less than a
minute or two and it would be over. He was going to save his friends and Casey
Stillman. And soon he would wake up in his bed, his arms around his girls! He
was really going to fucking make it!

Jack forced
his mind to stay in the game and continued his scan.

“Move your ass,
Simmons!” he shouted, then fired at movement he thought he saw from a doorway,
but never saw his round hit anything. He continued his scan. Jack knew that
this one was crucial. McIver and Ballard hadn’t died the first time either, so
he hadn’t really proven much yet. He watched Simmons start his sprint from the
corner of his eye.

Simmons ran
with less self‐control, his scan over the sight of his rifle a little more
halfhearted. Jack knew the boy was scared. He pushed the distracting empathy
out of his mind and concentrated on clearing the doorways and windows with his
scan. He heard a scream of pain from down the street, piercing even over the
rifles firing right beside his head. Nice shooting, someone, he thought. Bennet
probably.

“Up high!” It
was Kindrich’s voice and it sounded panicked. “RPG! Go, Simmons, GO!”

Jack scanned
along the roof edge, his own heart now pounding.

God, no!
Please, no!

His scan
stopped on a figure, draped in a dark robe, pulling the launcher for the rocket‐propelled
grenade up to his shoulder. Jack squeezed.

Dust kicked up
from the lip of the roof and the man stumbled, his hip pulled awkwardly to the
right as if he was trying to perfect a ridiculous dance step, then there was a
blinding flash of white flame as the RPG fired.

Corporal Rich Simmons,
United States Marine Corps, was just over halfway across the street when Jack’s
eyes were torn from the wounded Hadji and over to the boy’s terrified run for
cover. His rifle was no longer at his shoulder. Instead he tore across the
street in a full sprint, arms pumping, rifle clutched but useless in his right
hand. As Jack watched, the world slowed to half speed. In horror he saw the
rocket‐propelled grenade hit the ground a mere five yards from the terrified
young Marine.

The street
disappeared in a blinding flash and the force of the explosion knocked the three
remaining Marines backwards on their asses. Jack scrambled back up to his knees
and searched through the smoke and billowing cloud of sand and dust for
Simmons.

“Rich!” Jack’s
voice was a terrified and uncontrolled scream. “Goddamnit! RICH, CAN YOU HEAR
ME!”  Jack had a sinking feeling, not just for the young boy he felt so bonded
to and somehow so responsible for, but also for himself. If Simmons was dead he
had changed nothing. Hoag was going to be right. He couldn’t change shit, and
he was going to die here in this shithole street, in this shithole country,
seven thousand miles away from his girls. “SIMMONS!”

A weak voice
billowed out from the cloud of dust and drifted through the ringing in his
ears. “S…S…Sar’n?”

It was him! He
was alive! Maybe there was a chance, yet.

“We’re coming
for you, Rich,” Bennet hollered. Jack grabbed at his sleeve, but Bennet shook
it off and started full speed through the cloud of dust and smoke.

“Bennet—wait, goddamnit!”
But the Marine ignored him and tore across the battle‐torn street, looking for
his friend.

“I’m coming,
Rich!” he hollered as he ran, marking himself as a target with the sound, Jack
thought grimly. Next to go—different order, but same fucking ending to the
nightmare. Would Casey be last, but just as dead? Jack raised his weapon to his
shoulder and scanned through the smoke at the rooftops, the worst threat to his
men. He saw movement through the hazy smoke and fired again. Any change could
domino into a different outcome, he thought. No one was dead yet, his hopeful
mind told him. Kindrich was still right beside him and he was supposed to die
first, right?

“Sar’n?”
Kindrich’s voice was tight and high pitched. “Should we—”

Kindrich’s words
were cut off, and Jack would never know what his friend thought they should do.
He never heard the crack of the shot that killed him, but he heard the high‐pitched
squeal of the round as it cut through the air beside his head. Jack turned just
in time to see a high‐velocity round enter his friend’s head just above his
right eye. It exploded out the back of his head, carrying into the street.
Kindrich’s helmet flipped off what was left of his head. Jack watched in horrified
fascination as it spun in slow motion through the air; Kindrich fell backwards,
weapon still at his shoulder and face twisted in surprise.

Just like
before. Just exactly like before except along this corner instead of along that
shitty little wall.

Kindrich’s
corpse, with its surprised face and helmetless half head, hit the ground beside
him hard, raising its own cloud of dust. The arms and M16A collapsed beside the
empty body. The head hit the dirt with a nauseating crunch and dark blood shot
out in all directions around it in the dirt, forming a grotesque halo around
the blank face. Jack turned away. No need to check. Even without the memory of
his death from before Jack knew Kindrich was dead. Hard to keep tickin’ without
the ol’ melon, he thought without appropriate emotion. Hard to get too worked
up.

Seen this episode
too many times before
.

He fired his
weapon up at the rooftops again in a detached way, not really feeling any longer
like he was part of what was going on around him. He wondered what Pam was
doing. What time was it there, anyway? Was Claire up?

Pop pop pop
from his
rifle.

Would Pam
remember any of their time together? Their time as Jack and Pam? Or had that
never really even happened? Maybe she was already standing at the grave of her
husband, the grave of Sergeant Casey Stillman, Killed in Action, Fallujah, Iraq.

Jack’s body
sagged and his rifle fell to his side, his trigger finger limp. It was over, right?

Time to die.

“Sar’n!
…CASEY!!” Bennet’s voice reached him through the smoke. That didn’t seem right
somehow. Why was that wrong? Jack felt confusion spread over him and cocked his
head to the side, puppylike. “Casey, help me…Simmons’ leg is tore up but he’s
okay…” A burst of M16 fire. Must have been from Bennet. “Sar’n, you there? I
NEED HELP.”

Wait a goddamn
minute! Simmons was alive? How could that be? He had died before for sure, had
come to him dead at school and at his house and…and he never had a fucked-up
leg! His face was blown off but his skinny little legs had been fine. And
anyway, he had never seen Simmons hit last time. He had already been shot
himself, right? He was lying in the dirt clinging to life and fighting to
breathe when they had laid his friend beside him in the dirt. And Bennet should
have been dead already, his throat torn out by a bullet and the RPG burying him
beside that wall.

He sure as
hell sounded okay to Jack.

“Bennet, hold
on!” Jack screamed through the blinding smoke, snapped back to life and heart
pounding with fresh hope. He could still do it. Maybe? “I’m coming!”

“I’m coming,
Bennet!” McIver’s voice.

“NO!” He
screamed as he pulled his weapon up and scanned over the sight. He moved into
the street, hoping the smoke would give him some cover, blinding the bad guys
to his position. “McIver! Ballard! Stay right where you are. Give me covering
fire! I’m coming!” Jack started to run.

“Roger that,
Sar’n!” Jack heard a burst of rifle fire from the far corner as McIver and
Ballard tried to keep the bad guys down.

Jack tore
across the street, crouched awkwardly and painfully, trying to stay small. His
weapon was up, but he could see nothing through the smoke and dust. He squeezed
the trigger in the general direction of the rooftops anyway, hoping to keep the
insurgents’ heads down. He heard almost continuous single‐shot fire from his
two Marines at the corner. His legs burned. In his panic he covered the
distance much more quickly than he thought and tripped over the hunched figure
of Bennet, up on one knee in the street, firing up at the rooftops. Losing his
balance, Jack skidded through the dusty street painfully on both knees and his
outstretched left hand, an awkward slide into second base. His right hand
managed to keep his weapon up at his shoulder somehow, though he still could
see nothing through the smoke and dust cloud that surrounded them. A low moan
beside him pulled Jack’s gaze away from the impenetrable cloud and down to the
street.

He wasn’t
prepared for what he saw. Bennet had said Rich’s leg was torn up, but that
didn’t cover it. The boy lay on his back, his eyes open and staring upward. His
body shook, his arms quivered at his sides, and his hands opened and closed
around nothing. Simmons’ entire left side was drenched in blood, which had
mixed with the fine, dusty Iraqi sand to form a brownish-grey mud. Below the
knee his leg was twisted around in an impossible direction. The booted ankle
faced the wrong way and the skin was shredded away with his pants, revealing
reddish meat through which a stark, white finger of bone pointed at him. A
small arcing spray of blood pulsed like a little fountain out of the mess that
had been the boy’s leg. Jack pulled a desert camouflage‐printed bandana from
his cargo pocket and balled it up, then pressed it firmly over the source of
the little fountain. The contact made Simmons moan louder and he mumbled
something that Jack didn’t understand. The shredded muscles under Jack’s hand
began to spasm and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. He was barely
aware of the gunfire around him and the acrid smoke that burned his eyes and
throat. For a moment his whole world was his hand pressing ever harder into the
wet flesh of his friend’s leg as he tried to slow the steady dark stream of
Rich’s life from running out into the street.

“What the fuck
are you guys doing?” McIver’s voice from the corner brought Jack out of the near
trance. He had to get Simmons off of this fucking street.

“I’m comin’ to
you with Simmons,” he hollered in a raspy voice that was not his. It was tinny
and foreign in his ear. He again felt detached from what was going on and
struggled to hang on to the hope that he would be at home with his girls soon.

Jack let go of
his pressure on the twisted flesh and bone of Simmons’ leg and grabbed the boy
by the straps of his load-bearing vest. He struggled to his feet under the dead
weight of the wounded Marine and started a half run towards the corner. Jack
could see McIver at the corner now, and realized with some panic that the smoke
and dust were clearing. In a moment he would be an easy target. For a fleeting
second he considered letting go of Simmons and dashing to the corner, the
safety of which Jack saw as his portal out of his nightmare and back to his
real life. He looked down into Simmons’ face, pale and dirty and only inches
from his own. His friend smiled weakly.

“Good to go,
Sar’n,” he wheezed.

Jack pushed
on, propelling them through the dirty street. Simmons’ nearly severed leg bobbed
along behind them, leaving a thick bloody trail in the dirt.

“ROOFTOP!”
Bennet screamed from behind them. Then the dirt around them was kicked up by
rifle fire. In reply he heard the cracks of M16 fire from the corner ahead of
him and the street behind him. He felt like his chest would explode at any
second.

Jack fell
behind the corner of the wall and quickly pulled Simmons in behind him. He
allowed himself a few rasping breaths and a hacking cough, then pulled himself
out from under Rich’s limp body and rose to a knee at the corner beside McIver.
Holy shit, he had made it! He was alive! He looked at the thin, heaving boy
beside him. Simmons was alive too, at least for now.

Jack raised
his rifle and peered around the corner over the sight. He doubted that Simmons
would live, a horrible realization that competed with the overwhelming sense of
relief that he had made it. He felt sad, and guilty, and overjoyed that he
would be home any minute.

Jack fired his
rifle up at the rooftops and fully expected a cyclone of sand to swirl around
him and engulf him any minute, starting him on his short trip home. A part of
his mind anxiously waited, fearful that he had not started his trip already.
Was something wrong? Why was he still here? He had done it, hadn’t he? He was
safely across the street with what was left of his friends. Why the fuck was he
still here?