Project - 16 (25 page)

“
Don't worry,” she said. “I was careful with the leg but I
needed the can and you were out in the woods. Look,” she pointed to
the neatly stitched line in her trousers. “I repaired them
too.”

“
I'm glad to see that,” I said. “I brought tea.”

I opened the entrance to the shelter and lifted the carcass
inside. Riley gasped and gave me a slow clap.

“
Well?” I said.

“
Guess we're having real bacon then?”

It was gone midnight when Riley'd finished preparing as much
of the meat as she could, cooking it in the coals of the fire and
storing it in our 'fridge' outside. It was a bin bag packed with
meat that I buried in the snow and covered with the pulk that was
loaded down with stones. Then we ate as much as we could, devouring
thick slabs of hot roast pork until our stomachs threatened to
burst.

“
Wow,” said Riley. “I haven't eaten so well in a long
time.”

“
Hunger is the best sauce for any meat,” I said. “And you're
not a bad cook.”

“
I told you I wasn't, man. You just needed to find out for
yourself.”

I'd changed into my thermal gear - just some light weight
stuff made with fancy materials - so I could dry my sweaty working
clothes over the fire. They were done now and so I put them back on
as Riley mixed us a hot chocolate - another gift from Piotr's pack.
I settled down on the tarp, ready to sleep with my bag over me and
I stared into the flames, sipping the sweet drink and feeling a
deep sense of contentment, the satisfaction that comes from a hard
days work.

I noticed that Riley was looking sideways at me, stealing
glances every so often as the fire carried on its endless
lullaby.

“
What's up?” I asked.

“
Are you sleeping there tonight? Are you comfortable enough?”
she asked.

“
Yeah. Are you?”

“
Yeah, I guess so.”

I threw another log onto the pile and watched it catch. The
sparks drifted upwards towards the new roof beams. From where I lay
I could see the stars just outside of the shelter.

“
I just wanted to say...” she began. I heard her curse under
her breath. “What I mean is... I'm not going to fuck
you.”

“
Excuse me?” I said.

“
I mean, this isn't going to be like the movies where we get
it on next to a roaring fire because we've both been through trauma
and shit - understand?”

“
I don't think
you
do, but yeah, I get what you're saying. What's
all this about, Riley?”

“
I'm saying that last night, when we... slept here,” she said,
pointing to the corner. “Well, it was kind of nice - but it doesn't
mean anything, you know. We're not going to get all hot for each
other, you get me?”

“
No, I don't bloody get you. Why don't you get to the point
instead of dancing around it?”

“
Well fuck you then,” she snarled and folded her arms. “Just
fuck off.”

I turned back to the fire and sipped my chocolate. “You know,
Riley, you're enough to break a man.”

“
Again, fuck you,” she replied.

“
What you're trying to say is 'can we sleep in the corner
again' and yet you're finding it hard to say.”

“
I wouldn't want to sleep here with you if you were the last
person on earth.”

“
I might just well be,” I said.

“
Yeah,” she whispered. You might just be.”

I got up and carried my bag over to her as she leaned forward
to make room for me, grinning. This time I put my pack behind me
for a bit of comfort and she shuffled into place, pulling her
sleeping bag around us both. Her golden hair brushed up against my
cheek and without thinking I wrapped both my arms around her. There
was no resistance this time, no flinch, only a silently
communicated pleasure as her whole self relaxed into me.

“
We're still not going to fuck,” she whispered.

We sat there for a time, neither of us sleeping but both of
us staring into the fire. She rested her hand on top of mine and
sighed.

“
I'm... sorry... for this morning,” she said. “I was out of
line.”

“
It's okay,” I said. “I think I get it.”

“
I hope so. I'm used to being the one helping others, not
having to be helped myself. Does that make sense?”

“
Yeah.”

“
What doesn't make sense is how I'm fucking talking to you
about this shit. I never talk to anyone about this deep stuff. Why
is that?”

“
I don't know. I’ve always found talking about something is a
round-about way of asking for help. Sometimes the other person
doesn't need to answer because just venting the problem seems to
help. Other people want the Mr. Fixit answer.”

“
Who did you talk to once your Father had died?” she asked.
The question hit me out of the blue and I went quiet. “Sorry, I
didn't-”

“
No, it's okay. I was just thinking about it. I don't think we
had a 'talking' kind of relationship,” I said.

“
Really? That's not the impression I got. I thought you two
were tight?”

“
We were, in a way that guys are. I guess Dad was my model of
what it meant to be a man. I didn't have anything else until the
Soldiers started arriving for training. Men deal with problems,
they don't sit around talking about them, that was our way. We
never really sat down and discussed how we felt about
things.”

“
But you quote him a lot?” she said.

“
Most of what I know came from stuff he said on the path or
when we were working together, like his short sayings or something
he was thinking about. It just kind of... happened. We never sat
down and had a meeting to do the same thing.”

“
So you did talk, just not like this...”

“
Definitely not like this,” I laughed. “No, it's the
difference between learning in a classroom and learning through an
apprenticeship. In a classroom you get pure theory. Who the teacher
is and what he does isn't that important to the content of the
lesson-”

“
Oh, I see. But in an apprenticeship you learn from the
'master' not just a book.”

“
Exactly. You pick up his habits, his methods, his way of
living. It was like that with Dad.”

“
That makes more sense,” she said.

“
I think it does. I remember meeting some guys who came over
from New York who were all about hair and nails and fashion and I
can still see Dad's face when they opened their mouths. We were
both thinking the same thing - that they were in for a big shock
that week.”

“
Is that what you think manliness is?” she asked. “What you
do? Can men not be into 'girly' things like looking good and
sharing their feelings? Do they all have to be rugged men like you
and your Dad?”

“
No, but it helps,” I laughed.

“
Can women not be 'manly' - or do they have to stay in the
kitchen?”

“
I sense a pet topic here,” I said.

“
Well duh! I’ve been a walking, talking model of women-at-war
for a few years now. Would you prefer it if I stayed at home like a
good woman?”

“
That's not what I'm saying.”

“
What are you saying then?”

“
That it must have been hard to stay a woman in a man's
world.”

She'd been laughing up until that point but she suddenly went
quiet. Her grip on my hand tightened and she nodded.

“
Yeah. It fucking was. But something you said to Piotr made
sense. What's that word? Symb-”

“
Symbiosis?”

“
Yeah, that's it. That describes what I saw when I was with
the Rangers. Men had their strengths, women had theirs. When we
worked together, shit got done. When either of us tried to
overpower the other, it failed miserably. Is any of this making
sense?”

“
Perfect sense to me.”

“
I mean, I could shoot better than any guy - we're just more
patient and precise than most men. But when it came to the team's
decisions, Old Harry was the man! He could see things I couldn't,
he had a logic to him I couldn't get my head around.”

“
Who was 'Old Harry'?” I asked.

“
My Sergeant in Syria and France. I mean, I met women who
could think like that, I just think that the other guys were happy
to follow him because he was this big bear of a man. He oozed
leadership.”

“
Symbiosis.”

“
Yeah, I think so. We were a tight unit back then.”

“
Do you miss it?”

“
I miss the team. I miss being part of something. It didn't
matter how shitty it got - you had your buddies around you. It
stopped being work. It became social, like we were just getting
together for a few drinks. It made the hard stuff not so
hard.”

“
So why did you leave?”

“
Because they're all fucking dead.”

9.

The revelation was made all the more shocking by the way in
which the world seemed to take a minute of silence for her. The
wind gave up howling and the fire seemed to pause mid-meal without
even a last snap of a branch. I felt her sag in my arms like an
Atlas-sized burden had just rolled off her back. I said nothing.
This wasn't the time for cheap words or a toolbox full of
platitudes.

“
You're thinking they all died in combat. Like fucking war
heroes. Well let me tell you, they should have. They should have
been given a chance to die on their feet.”

“
But they get it?” I said.

“
No. They fucking didn't.”

I waited. The world resumed around us. That's all it was
prepared to give - there was plenty of grief elsewhere.

“
What happened?” I asked, through I found it one of the
hardest things to do.

“
We were stationed in Paris just as the Russians crossed the
border. We all knew it was coming. We were hyped, we were ready to
go, we were just waiting for the green light. The Op was easy
enough - hit and run raids on their convoys. High value targets
like comms relays, fuel supplies, things like that. We were armed
to the teeth and ready to rock. It would've been the first serious
action we'd had against the NSU since God-knows-when.”

“
A black op?”

“
Too fucking right it was black - blacker than than black can
ever be. There was a rumour that the CIA were on the ground like it
was 'Nam or something. There was a lot of excitement around.
Anyway, we finally get the go ahead to move. We're based in some
hotel - a nice place, when we decide to go down to the bar for a
last drink before we head out the following evening. I orders a
beer, the rest of the team do a shot, you know how it goes. The
next thing we know there's two guys in the doorway in long coats
and they're crying out in some fucked-up language. Old Harry jumps
up but before he can do anything they've pulled these giant LMG's
on us and they're blasting every fucker in the place. The Sergeant
drops in a fucking pile of blood and guts on the floor. The bar's
blasted to fuck and it's all going in slow motion for me. I swear I
saw bullets in the air in front of me. I can't do anything though -
our kit is up stairs! We've got nothing. The others, they're torn
apart, Billy, Mike, Helen, they're turned to mush by these giant
fucking guns that are just spitting lead at us, at everyone in the
bar. They just wouldn't stop. I felt something knock me off the
stool I'm sat on. I'm on the floor and it's my Spotter on top of
me. He looks me right in the eye as the rounds slam into him, one
after the fucking other. They just wouldn't stop...”

Her words were cut off by the sobs that racked her body. She
tried to roll onto her bad side, to curl up into something smaller,
less vulnerable, but the pain of her wound stabbed into her. I
tightened my grip, smothering her just as her hands clamped onto my
arms, trying to hide from it all. The grief disabled me and I had
nothing to fix her with.

In the morning I jerked awake to the sound of howling far off
in the distance. It was only about 4 am and still dark. I crawled
carefully out from behind Riley who'd only stopped weeping when the
exhaustion had taken over. I went to the mouth of the shelter,
picking up my rifle as I went. It'd rained during the night and the
cloudy sky still lingered overhead in an almost violet hue. I was
cold and yet my nerves were on end, causing my stomach to
knot.

I raised the weapon, scanning the empty field with the scope,
passing back and forth. There was little to see as it was, just
dark shaded patches with indistinct shapes.

“
What is it?” whispered Riley from behind me. She was getting
to her feet using the wall as support.

“
Dogs,” I replied. The howling began again, nearer this
time.

“
Pass it here,” she said, taking the rifle from me. I moved
aside and she hobbled into a decent position to view from. “How
long until dawn?” she asked.