Fog (23 page)

At this rate, it will take until Christmas for me to arrive. I speed up; sweat soaks my shirt and face. My ruck is glued to my back and thick red liquid begins to ooze down my leg and trickles onto my bare foot. Shit. This makeshift bandage isn’t worth a fly fart.
 

When I finally find Runner, his face is unrecognisable; it’s that of an old man. He’s gazing through his scope as if he could change what he sees simply by wishing for it. I know how that feels.

I drop my ruck and my rifle, gingerly sit down and touch his shoulder. ‘Tell me what you see,’ I say, coaxing him into mission mode.

‘The machine is burned out. Two men are standing at approximately fifteen metres distance from the wreck. The flames are too…’ He swallows. ‘Too high.’

‘What about the helicopter?’ I ask.

‘Down.’

I wipe thoughts of Yi-Ting and Ben away. My brain doesn’t process lost lives, it shows me only what’s to happen next. I hand Runner my canteen. He takes a sip, his mind is far away. ‘Get up,’ I say. He blinks at me and stands.
 

He helps me with my ruck and rifle, and we march off together, bloodthirst burning in my trigger finger. Trees, bushes, rocks, and small streams only touch the corner of my vision. Irrelevant information is pushed to the back of my mind; all I do is count down the remaining metres’ distance to the camp while scanning our surroundings for the enemy. The lower half of my body is aching; it’s registered as a nuisance and shut off. Walk. Climb. Move forward. We reach a crest, quickly cross it, and hike down again. We have to stay invisible and that often lengthens our walks. No hiking along riverbeds or exposed hilltops.

‘You are bleeding,’ he points out and stops. ‘Sit down. We’ll take a short break.’

Now, I’m glad to rest my leg. He helps me pull down my pants then unwraps the bandages.
 

‘No one survived?’ I ask, knowing the answer already. But I have to make sure.

He shakes his head no and extracts the MedKit from his ruck.

‘The helicopter crew?’

‘I don’t know. The machine went down on the other side of the camp.’

We both know what happens to survivors. ‘We need to hurry,’ I say.

‘I know. But we have to arrive in one piece. You need a few stitches. No morphine this time, though.’

‘Did I use it all up?’ Maybe that’s why I slept like a log.

‘No. But the drug tempers with your aim.’

‘Oh. Okay. No morphine, then. Do your thing.’ I lean back and look up at the foliage.

The coolness of the disinfectant and the faint whiff of alcohol tells me the pain is about to come. And shit does it hurt! How can such a small needle hurt like that when I didn’t even feel the shrapnel enter my leg and side?

It takes effort to stay in control — my knees vibrate from the pain, my teeth grind against each other.

‘Two more,’ he says softly. ‘And now, the last one.’
 

He cuts off the thread and again sprays disinfectant on the wound. His warm palms rest on my knees until they stop trembling.
 

‘Thanks,’ I manage.

As he wraps a fresh bandage around my leg, he whispers, ‘She told me she loved me.’

Unable to say anything helpful, I place my hand over his.

He lowers his head and looks down at our intertwined fingers as if he’s never seen anything like it.
 

‘Just like that,’ he continues. ‘Without really knowing me, she offered me her love and I didn’t say anything nice in return.’

Confused, I don’t say a peep. If he wants to tell me what this all means, he will do so in his own time.

We empty our canteens, eat a few nuts, and the last piece of cold meat.
 

I think of Yi-Ting, her honesty and kindness. She
sees
people when she looks at them. She sees what’s there and she doesn’t judge. In her eyes, my… In her eyes everything seems to be beautiful. She sees when someone needs something, finds the right words to make people feel better. When I feel lonely, she sits with me or runs with me. She cares. And… And she never seemed to think much about what she wanted for herself.
 

I notice the change from “she is” to “she was” and it breaks my heart. I think of kissing her skin, right on that place at the wing of her hipbone, and on her slender neck. Her flavours spread from the tip of my tongue to the depths of my throat; flavours of plum and tuna, and of forest berries dancing in a wooden bowl. Swallowing, I force the water from my eyes.

I think of Ben: his humour, his ridiculous hair that looked like a bunch of golden baby curls, his recklessness and courage, his big heart. All that flirting was probably just his way of living. He loved life and this world and all women in it.

I look down at our hands still clutching one another, and I wonder how some people can be on a battle field for weeks or even years, and stay sane. Maybe they don’t. Will I know if or when I lose my mind? I gaze up at Runner who seems to be sanest person in the world. His presence is the calm eye of the storm; his measured voice, his physical and mental strength, his kindness. But there’s a rage deep inside that’s formidable and frightening. I’ve seen it when he’s squeezing off round after round. There is darkness in him rattling at the cage. And I know that, once it breaks out, I’ll be holding his hand, letting it spill out and over me and taking it away from him, and I’ll be telling him that I know how it feels, because I do. The presence of his darkness mends my own darkness. I’m safe when he’s around.
 

He meets my gaze and nods. It’s time.

Our last stop. A bit more than one kilometre from the camp, we drop our rucks and hide them. Runner takes out his SatPad once more and tries to contact Kat. We need to know why the attack has been moved ahead and what’ll happen now that the helicopter is down. Will there be a backup? Does she need something specific from us other than an assault on the camp and a rescue mission if anyone has survived the crash?

Runner’s questions go unanswered, and we don’t even know if it’s a problem with our SatPad, the connection, or if Kat is unable to answer. He groans and rubs his forehead.

And all of a sudden, three dots blink on the SatPad’s screen.

‘Cacho?’ I ask.

Runner checks the time. ‘It’s not his window.’

Heat crawls up my neck.

Soon, my dear,
appears in black on light-grey.
Soon, you’ll meet me.

I squint at the letters, their significance grates against the inside of my head. Runner speaks in a voice that’s cold as ice. ‘We’re alone now.’

‘Erik is mine,’ I croak. ‘That man was playing with us all along. He killed my friends.’ I hate this guy so much, I might actually be combusting.
 

‘They were my friends, too.’

‘He’s mine,’ I insist. ‘I get the first shot.’ My fury dampens the pain in my leg and the throbbing in my side.

‘I hope you’ll miss,’ he says, and I know what he means. He wants to rip out that man’s throat. And by all that is dear to me, I do want that very badly, also.

We crawl through the forest. The gas is still lingering in the air and my throat tickles, my eyes burn. Coughing and barked commands echo from the direction of the camp.
 

Runner helps me into a foxhole and disappears. I put in my earbud. He’s checking on the helicopter crew, first in the camp, then at the site where it came down. I switch on the squeeze light, drink my fill and check my bandages, ammo, and rifle. Today, I’ll keep shooting; there’ll be no cease fire until every single one of them lies in the dust, with life bleeding from their bodies. They’ll have to bomb my ass out of this hole to get me to stop.

‘Requesting permission to open fire,’ I say and get one tap in return.

I open the hatch a crack, and arrange netting and twigs, making myself and my rifle invisible. Slowly, the fog begins to rise, mingling with gas, smoke, and ash, mingling with my friends’ remains. I scan the camp and the perimeter. Movements are hectic; men flit back and forth between tents and huts. Bending low, they stay behind the wall; only occasionally do I see the top of a head in my crosshairs. Muffled cries of ‘The Fog!’ echo through the woods.
 

You bet! Tonight, you’ll not get out of The Fog alive. None of you.

‘No survivors at the site of the crash,’ whispers in my ear. ‘Do you see any in the camp?’

‘No,’ I answer. ‘They are very cautious. I can barely see anyone.’

‘I’ll fire from a tree and drive them out.’

Soon, I hear the first shot. But it’s not coming from the woods. It’s from the camp. And another. And a third, fourth.
 

No survivors left now, I think, but then Runner says, ‘They have a woman.’
 

A scream cuts through the mist, an eerie wail that speaks of torture and loss of hope. A moment later, the muzzle report of Runner’s rifle hollers through the depths of the forest.

For the blink of an eye, silence falls.

And then, without warning, the night splits wide open.

Part Three - Tempest

Do your best to forget my difficult days.
 

Give me to the wind to take away.

Reyhaneh Jabbari.

The world before me is round. Not round as in sphere-round, but as in circular-round, a dotted cross stamped on its milky surface. Green is the only colour glimmering atop the greyscale. Green is where my bullets will go. Black and green is how blood looks when it spills. Even the scents of the forest are black and green. Black like the soil; green like the foliage. The white is the fog. The Fog. Me. Silently, I embrace and engulf you. You don’t hear the bullet that gets you, for it travels faster than sound. You don’t hear death leaping at you. But I can hear you dying. And I can see your body growing as grey and black as the soil that drinks your blood.

‘Micka?’ Runner whispers through my earbud.

‘Yes?’

‘The BSA’s helicopter is gone and I can’t see Erik, either. I don’t know how many men he took with him but…’ He stops, then produces a soft hiss. I wait.
 

Booom!
The muzzle report bounces off the trees. It’s the deep sound of Runner’s .50 calibre rifle. A long moment later, he continues, ‘Kat must have given the go signal to all our forces. Our ships will be on the move. Erik’s on the move, too, it seems. We’ll finish this tonight, then we get to the west coast as quickly as we can.’

That means we’ll be rather slow; I can’t run. But I can take down anyone who shows in my finder.
 

‘Acknowledged,’ I whisper — inhale, hold, and fire at the top of a head who dares to peek over the sandbag wall. I learned days ago that the BSA never lets the kids hide in safety. Whoever is behind that wall, it’s a man with a gun. The six children left alive are walking the perimeter, all packed with explosives, not one of them assigned the job of the overseer and executioner. Tonight, it’s only the men behind the wall shouting commands and pointing rifles at the kids, directing them farther away or closer to the camp, depending on where they suspect our location.

The BSA is changing. It seems that, for years now, Erik has been sharpening them as one sharpens a blade. From the bottom of my dark hole, I can see what he’s doing, I understand what he wants. He wants to make a clean cut, one that lets you bleed out so quickly, you barely have time to notice you’re dying. And somehow, I think I can understand why he wants to stop humanity from populating this planet. He knew my parents, my whole village. I’ve always believed something’s wrong with them. But now, I know that they are not so very different from other people. A little cruelty here, a good amount of ignorance there. Erik knows human history, the universal pattern — that of violence expressed by the few, abetted by the ignorance and inertia of the many; that of the attitudes “but they started the argument” and “not my problem.” Here in my dark hole, these sentiments don’t even touch my mind. If I believed this shit were “not my problem” I wouldn’t be here; if I kept repeating the tiresome sermon of “but the Bullshit Army started the argument,” I’d be an idiot. I don’t give a shit who started it, but I’ll bring it to an end.