Soldier's Women

SOLDIER’S WOMAN

By

Megan Ziese

© Copyright by Megan Ziese, August 2009

Cover Art by Eliza Black, August 2009

ISBN 1-58608-350-5

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the
author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living
persons or events is merely coincidence.

The troop had been dropped behind enemy lines. As far as the government was
concerned, they didn’t exist.

Nigel leaned against an old tree for support, being sure to stay low to the
ground so that the bushes near the base of the tree mostly obscured him.

Sweat was beginning to stream down his face now. He had to resist the
instinct to mop at it, knowing it might take off some of his face paint. He
ignored the discomfort of the heat and the mosquitoes whining in his ears. His
life and the life of his fellow troops were in jeopardy if things didn’t go
according to plan.

He heard a bird call, the signal to proceed toward the package. Just as he
rose up, though, he heard rapid gun fire and return fire on his left.

Then, all hell broke loose.

The enemy started running from the undergrowth on the other side of the
forest opposite his troop, whooping and hollering like maniacs, firing at
everything and anything that moved. Men shouted and screamed in agony as they
were gunned down. His nostrils stung with the smell of gunpowder as he raced
forward from his hiding place toward the package, but it was too late. The enemy
was bearing down on it and all the rest of his troop were in mortal combat.
Static broke through on his shoulder com, and then he heard his commanding
officer yelling for all of them to fall back to the extraction point.

Cursing, he left the package, to heavy for one man alone to carry, and headed
for the deep cover of the woods, stopping to fire at the enemy as he ducked
behind trees here and there. He kept going, trying to keep up with the rest of
the troop, most of which were further ahead. Thankfully, they weren’t far from
the extraction point.

Firing again at the enemy hot on his trail, he broke away from the protection
of a thick tree and made a run for it. He heard the crack of a gun from behind
him, heard the sound of it as it continued to fire in his direction. And then he
felt the heat of the bullets as they tore through his flesh. He grunted in pain
and fell forward, whether from the force of the bullets or the pain he wasn’t
sure.

He couldn’t stop. He had to keep moving. If they caught up with him, he was a
dead man. He got to his feet and willed his body to ignore the pain. Thankfully,
adrenaline was kicking in and it wasn’t too unbearable. He ran as fast as he
could through the thick undergrowth of the woods until he stumbled upon another
member of his troop on the ground leaning against a tree. He leaned down and
pushed the man’s head back so that he could see his face. It was Sgt. Wilmont, a
good friend.

Wilmont moaned when Nigel pushed his head back.

Nigel could see why. He’d been shot through the neck and there was a massive
amount of blood coating his camouflage.

Grabbing Wilmont by one arm, his slung it over the back of his shoulders and
helped him to his feet. He was like a dead weight against him, but he wasn’t
about to leave him. He set off as quickly as he could, more urgent now that he
could see the break in the tree line.

They knew they were fucked, but he wasn’t going to let that knowledge stop
him.

As he ran from the coverage of the forest, he was almost blinded by the light
that met his eyes. His breath left him in short bursts. The pain shooting
through his arm and leg from where the bullets had gone through him were almost
too much to bear, but still he continued to carry Wilmont. The smaller man had
long since passed out from loss of blood from the gunshot through the side of
his neck.

Too many had already lost their lives this day, he was determined they
wouldn’t be among them. He struggled on, willing himself to go faster as he
heard the snipers closing in on their group and a few of his fellow soldiers
return fire just a few yards behind him. Soldiers rushed past him to the plateau
up ahead. He could hear the engine of the helicopter that had come to get them,
but it was still out of site. Not long now. He could make it. He could see the
swirling of sand up ahead, he could almost feel the buzz of the engine.

A shot whizzed past his ear, and he ducked down behind some rocks close by,
dragging Wilmont with him. His lungs were on fire now, and he was covered in
sweat and blood. There was so much blood he couldn’t tell how much of it was his
and how much of it belonged to Wilmont, but he knew they were both bleeding
profusely. They didn’t have much time. More gun shots rang out, and he could
hear return fire from the plateau. The rest of the group had made it to the
helicopter. A few seconds later, he saw the chopper fly overhead.

They had left them! A sinking feeling of despair began to fill him.

They must have thought he had been gunned down like the rest of the party.
Realizing that he didn’t have the luxury for remorse at the moment, he acted
quickly. Looking around for some kind of cover, he spotted a small depression in
the rock just a few feet from him. He could make it and still be sheltered from
view by the jutting rocks he was leaning against.

Picking up Wilmont again, he gritted his teeth against the pain coursing
through him. He slowly made his way over to the depression, hoping they would
make it inside before they were found. The hole was shallow, but it was large
enough for the two men to lay down inside and not be seen. Getting down inside,
he laid Wilmont on the floor quickly and quietly.

Turning to see if they had been spotted, he saw that blood had dripped all
the way to where he was, creating an easy line to follow. He had to hurry, he
had to cover up the trail of blood he had left in his wake before the enemy
found them.

Grabbing a handful of sand from the cavern floor, he stood up, exposed from
his shoulders up, and tossed the sand over the blood. It wasn’t enough. He bent
and grabbed two more handfuls twice again, quickly covering the trail.

Rock crunched under the booted feet of the enemy as they approached the
outcropping of rock he had leaned against for protection just a few minutes
earlier.

As he lay waiting to be captured by the enemy, he pulled his rifle up and
gripped it tightly against his chest with both hands. He tried to maintain
alertness. He had to be ready. At least, he might be able take some of them with
him. But, despite his best efforts, he began to drift toward unconsciousness.

The depression was much cooler than the hot sand he’d been running through. A
breeze swept over his hot skin. It felt good. He closed his eyes.

Briefly, he considered trying to bandage his injuries, but he became more
lethargic by the second, and his thoughts were a dizzying dark spiral in his
mind. Had he covered their tracks well enough? Would the enemy find them anyway?

For what seemed like an eternity, he lay, waiting for something. He couldn’t
tell how long he’d been there, minutes, hours? But soon, he lost focus, and he
thought of his mother and his brothers back home. The life he could have had
floated by in his mind’s eye, a home of his own, a job outside the military, a
family. His mother had so desperately wanted grandchildren, but he had kept
putting it off. There was plenty of time to make a family, to have children,
he’d told her.

Before he slipped into the black abyss calling him, one thought haunted him.
I will never see my sons.

* * * *

Sera was really nervous and feeling a little panicky. Trying hard, she
resisted the urge to revert to childhood and start gnawing on her fingernails.
The doubts and worries she had been carrying weighed heavy on her now, wondering
whether or not she should go through with it or even would be able to go through
with it. Would being artificially inseminated hurt or just feel mildly
uncomfortable? But, the most painful worry of all was whether or not she would
be able to carry the baby to full term.

She hated doctors and even worse, she hated needles. During the screening
process, they had shown her what they were going to impregnate her with. It
wasn’t pretty. Never before had she seen a needle so long. It was very daunting.
She had nearly fainted then. It was a good thing women were around to have the
babies, because she had the distinct feeling that the strongest of men would
have shied away from the mammoth needle they had so casually displayed.

Trying to distract herself from her nervous jitters, she looked around at the
pictures of babies on the walls. There were many personal photos taken of
mothers holding their infants right after birth. One woman in particular caught
her attention. She had tears in her eyes and she looked at her little bundle
like there was nothing else in the world that mattered. Sera couldn’t help but
envy the women in the photographs. They had already gone through the process.
The hard part was over for them. Now they could enjoy the fruits of their
labors.

The strangeness of the situation, to be sitting where she was now, began to
dawn on her. It had only been a few weeks earlier that she had seen the ad in
the paper advertising for a surrogate mother, an ad the likes of which she had
never seen before. In fact, she hadn’t known that papers advertised for
surrogates, or perhaps it was the first ad of its kind in their local paper.

As she had scanned through the morning paper, sipping her coffee at her desk
in her home office, it was the headline that had caught her attention: Woman
seeking surrogate for her soldier son gone MIA. Curiosity had encouraged her
to continue on. And what she had read had brought tears to her eyes. She could
feel the woman’s heartbreak over the tragic loss of her son, the woman’s need to
find solace in fulfilling her dream to become a grandmother, in finding the
right woman to bring her son’s children into the world so that a part of him
would live on. The editor from the paper had written an article about the
mother, and, although they were not supposed to be bias, they had insinuated in
a not so subtle manner that the woman was trying to replace the child she had
lost.

The article had angered Sera. What business was it of theirs anyway? Who were
they to judge? Anyone in the woman’s situation would be devastated, unless they
didn’t actually care about their child. She thought she would be hard pressed to
say how she would act given the same circumstances. And you really couldn’t know
without being there. You might think that you would react a certain way, but
without the personal experience, it was really up in the air.

Later that day, while working on her laptop, she had thought about what the
woman was asking. She had realized it was a lot to ask of someone. Being a
surrogate was nothing new, for sure. But how could a woman have a child within
her body, feel it moving, know that you are the reason it’s alive, and then give
it away when it’s born? Even if you knew that was what you had planned to do,
how could a woman be so impartial to something that was that so much a part of
her? That part was hard for her to digest.

But the article and the woman’s situation had gotten her thinking about her
own life. She had always wanted children, even when she was a little girl
playing with baby dolls, dragging them through the yard and protecting them from
the neighborhood boys and dogs that were always chasing her and taking them away
to tear them up. Somewhere along the way, she had gotten so busy with her life,
so consumed with work, she had lost sight of that.

At first, the company she had started when she was only twenty had been a
distraction to console her over the loss of her parents when they had died in a
plane crash on the way to an important business meeting. But then, she had
really delved deep into her work, blotting out everything else, including
relationships with men. She hadn’t had someone important in her life since, and
that had been nearly ten years ago. She supposed it was her own irrational way
of staying away from the pain and heartache of losing someone important, but she
couldn’t live her life that way, she had realized. No matter what she did, if
she was alive, she would experience loss, it was a part of life. And she
couldn’t keep on living the way she had once she had read the woman’s words. She
realized that something in her life had to change.

Suddenly, it became very important that she meet the woman who had placed the
ad, Irene Savage, the woman who had lost so much but was determined to keep on
living, to keep the circle of life going. She hadn’t known if she would ask to
be considered or not when she had made the plan to call the woman and set up a
meeting, all she had known was that she had to connect with someone, someone who
wanted a baby as much as she did.

It was as if her internal clock had been shut off for a very long time and
someone had just turned it back on. She had a new awareness, a new lease on
life. It was as if she was starting to see things around her for the very first
time and things didn’t look good. She was getting older, and, although from an
outside point of view, her life might look like it was full of accomplishments,
what good was any of that without family, without people to share her life
with?

Goosebumps raced down the skin exposed by the shortness of the dowdy white
medical gown the nurse had asked her to don. The sterile atmosphere of the room
gave her the chills, along with the low temperature they insisted on keeping.
They wouldn’t want anyone getting any cozy warm feelings about being at the
doctor’s office. But it was part of the process if she was going to have a baby.
And, really, mild discomfort was worth the end result.

She began to rub her arms in an effort to chase away the cold. That brought
her attention back to the cold metal instruments in the room. They were the same
instruments that would be using on her. She dreaded having to be probed, and,
according to one of the women she’d talked briefly with in the waiting room,
there were lots of visits throughout the pregnancy and most of them required
probing.