The Altonevers (18 page)

“
Why is it the same?” Cider
asks.

“
I don't know?” Mickey
answers.

“
Hey, how do you know it is
the same every day, if every day is the same then how come you know
it’s different?” she asks.

“
I too am living the same
day every day, though I am the only one who knows it. That
remembers today is every day from sun up to sun up of the next day.
The rest are like goldfish, having the same tears, the same
expressions, valiant efforts and cowardice. It's a wonderful thing
to be able to see, to contemplate, but it’s been an eternity too
long.”

“
That does…sound nice,” she
says awkwardly, trying to sound not terrified of walking through an
active battlefield.

“
It can be, depends on your
vantage and the time. Care for a drink, it's strong. The clean
stuff of from the other side,” the medic offers, though Anna’s
still unsure, suspicious of him, and that he’s medic, familiar with
medicines, good and bad.

“
Sure,” Cider accepts and
spews it out a second later “Why is it oily and sour?” he
shouts.

“
That’s the good stuff.
Good Joe is supposed to be, friend,” Mickey says
smiling.

“
It isn't,” he coughs out,
wiping his mouth.

“
None for me thanks,” she
says, “say, why are they at war anyway?”

“
A smoke before we go?”
Mickey asks.

“
Sure,” and Cider takes a
rolled smoke from the medic.

“
No thanks,” she
declines.

“
Anyway, I now where every
bullet hits and bomb lands, so just follow me and heed my
instructions, and we'll all walk through the battlefield easily as
walking on water.”

“
No thank you, that sounds
insane,” she says.

“
Which part?” Cider
asks.

“
All of it,” she quickly
answers.

“
Oh, no worries dovie. I've
done this countless times.”

“
How do we know you’re not
trying to trick us?” he asks sizing Mickey up, who seems to him
like a long necked goose of a person.

“
What reason do I have to
do that? I could've killed the both of you when I had the drop on
you, but I didn't, did I?” Mickey says.

“
True, you didn’t,” Cider
nods approvingly to Anna.

“
It's the same thing every
day. I’m just happy to see something new, let alone new company,
new people to talk to. I don't even have any weapons, see,” he
says, taking his pockets out to show them, “but a medical knife,
you can trust me. I'll lead you safely through the fray unharmed. I
swear it,” he says wearing an excited expression.

“
Alright,” she agrees, with
her tongue in her throat. Unnerved by this man, like she’s seeing a
shadowless ghost standing in front of her.

“
Okay. I need to get each
of you a uniform. I'll be back in a few minutes,” Mickey says
before he bolts through the brush, uncaring of the firefight
unfolding all around him. Stepping gracefully around the mortars
and bullets without even breaking stride, then vanishing over a
dirt mound and making his way to munitions stacked at the mouth of
a trench.

“
He seems alright,” he
whispers.

“
He's nice it's just a
little odd here,” she says ”you remember the water don't
you?”

“
Of course I remember the
water,” he says looking at his bone dry hands.

“
Why is he the only one who
knows every day is the same? why isn't he like that too?” she says
hushed but harshly.

“
I dunno, sometimes strange
things happen,” Cider says, “like people fleeing from their own
atomizing Alto.”

“
That’s diff…,” she
whispers and stalls.

“
I've returned with the
proper clothes,” The medic says standing perfectly still, and
grinning. The two of them are wondering if he'd heard them or
not.

“
I didn't see you come
back,” she says suspecting eye.

“
I know every way from
everywhere here. Would you like some chocolates?” Mickey asks her
seeking to soothe her apparent apprehension in his
presence.

“
If you have some I don't
see why not,” she says.

“
I do,” he says, pulling
out a large bar of cream lightened cocoa, breaking a stone sized
piece for her and handing it out cautiously, like he's feeding a
stray cat.

“
It's a bit dense, but it
does taste very good,” she says smiling. It tastes like nothing,
not even having the texture of chocolate. It’s brittle and
breaking, not melting over her tongue.

“
Thank you very much,” she
adds.

“
Yes, it’s scrumptious if I
say so myself,” Mickey says. The tall white clothed military medic
leads them along a barely beaten trail. Through stubby brush and
high crosshatching leaves edging shallow freshwater marshes with
lily pads, but no frogs or fish or anything living.

“
Yeah, I've done everything
here, everything you can think of. Bedded women on both sides,
dressed as the enemy, moved through the ranks meeting each
individual person, everything you can think of many times over.
Getting to know them closely as friends know each other, though the
next day they recall nothing of what we spoke. I know where the
whole battlefield lives, what they live for, their secrets and
their loves, every expression that’s ever crossed their faces, I
know well. Bit by bit each day adding to my memories of them,
forming their personalities one layer at a time.”

“
That's interesting,” she
says.

“
Playing the field,” Cider
says.

“
In a way you can see it
like that,” Mickey says. “Now follow my exact step and orders
precisely. Timing is important, one false step could be fatal so be
aware and follow closely, and I'll keep you from...oblivion,” the
Medic says like a camp counselor. A bullet breaks the bark of a
tree right beside them, then ten trees are shattered from the
forest by the force a bomb thirty yards to their left.

“
You knew about that?” she
asks.

“
Yeah, if it's not close
enough to hit you then I wouldn’t worry about it,” the medic says.
The three tiptoe through the gunfire, and run through open fields,
crawl under barb wire, through the trenches, and past shooting
soldiers. Diving in and out of fox holes and sprinting from the
whistle of falling artillery. Doing the Limbo under an machine gun
nest, at one point being pinned under fire by an overwhelming
offensive with more artillery bursts splashing in the air then she
can count. The three lay panting for breath behind sandbags in the
fetal position. Anna's fear pale face almost matches the goose
necked Medic's bluish skin, who's sitting upright carelessly
sipping his coffee.

“
Hey! get up, now. Trust
me, we're safe wherever we are,” Mickey says. He's been making a
game of leading them through the war zone, taking them near machine
gun nests to test and tease them. Fascinated with the new people
he's met, and finding it suspenseful to lead them into near death
to watch their instinctual reactions, that he himself no longer
feels. Intentionally bringing their heads within inches of whizzing
bullets to see them jump and wince in surprise. Once a pineapple
hand grenade’s shrapnel tears through her pants, nearly bringing
her to tears and getting dirt in all of their eyes.
For two hours they sit comfortably with gas masks
on their faces, locked out of a bunker while playing war with a
deck of cards and an enemy soldier. Along the way he makes a point
of taking them to the scenic spots he's collected through his days,
making a point of pointing out how good of a landscape painting
each would be. Explaining the symbolism he believes each scene
portrays. The best scenes of the battlefield, and at what time of
day and vantage to best see them from before reaching a yellowish
clay path, beaten only by Mickey’s daily walk home. A pale sickly
tree growing some kind of rotten fruits curves over the house
without casting a shadow.

“
Did you like it,” Mickey
asks.

“
You know it wasn't bad,”
Cider says.

“
We almost died dozens of
times,” she says sweating through her clothes, looking wired and
thoroughly traumatized.

“
You had not. I was careful
to take you along the safest paths, to thrill you but not kill you,
and you've seen some of the best views to see,” Mickey
says.

“
Thanks, that was very nice
of you,” she says.

“
You're both very welcome,
I do hope you feel that way.”

“
We do, thanks,” she
says.

“
Yeah that was fun,” Cider
says sincerely.

“
Good we're almost there,”
Mickey assures them.

“
Have you tried to die
here,” she asks.

“
Yes, thousands of times,
at least. I just wake up the next day and it's today again, and
again. It’s been very lonely at times, that's why it's so
refreshing,” the medic sighs relief, “to have new company, new
friends to have.”

“
Why do you remember and
they don't?” she asks.

“
The truth is, my best
guess is this is a kind of pasture for the passed on. It must be my
purgatory, of me coming from my hell,” the medic says.

“
Anything to do with us?”
Cider asks.

“
No, nothing at all. I was
a field medic in this soul torturing war, of kids sent to die,
needlessly, hundreds at a time to hold on to a hill, a little hill.
The screams of soldiers, and their never ending mortal wounds and
death gargles. The agony and moans of the maimed and dying haunt me
to this day. I watched thousands die in my own arms, endlessly more
arrive, only for me to watch them die as well. Their blood and
bones litter the battlefield, a swamp of corpses made by the
chemicals and mortars.

Almost never sleeping, many of the
others went into shellshock, not recovering, becoming raving mad,
and daft as ducks. Losing their minds under the constant threat of
death and the scenes of horror which they ceaselessly see and live
around them. Feeling the ripples of explosions. A carnage that
cleanses men of their souls. To survive this senseless savagery, of
man onto one another. A person must become devoid of emotion, a
walking corpse instead of a resting one.”

“
That sounds like hell to
me,” he says, taking a puff of a stale tasting smoke. Anna's now
looking empathetically at the nearly weeping medic.

“
That's what it felt like
to me, ravaging me to my core. An eternal torment of unending decay
and decimation of the soft souls of boys who are barely men, slain
to the sound of the mortar shells stripping the soil from the
earth,” Mickey says as they're standing comfortably, casually
chatting in the middle of the raging war zone. The gray uniforms on
the other line have more munitions or zeal at the moment. The blue
dressed, Mickey's side, is content with holding the line under an
atrocious rain of artillery fire.

“
I saved them,” Mickey
says, “a lot of them.”

“
It sounds like you we're a
brave medic?” she says.

“
Yes, but I mean I saved
them from that place. That hell.”

“
What do you mean?” Cider
asks, looking over to Anna.

“
The battlefield. I saved
them, after a few years, losing count of the days, only counting
supplies and who can be nursed back to life, and who can’t. I
realized that I can save them, truly save them from all of it, from
their hell and mine. That those dying in slow agony and the
mortally wounded are actually the lucky ones,” Mickey says
zealously. “They're free of the plague on their humanity that is
this torturous trench warfare. So when they got injured, I over
injected them with the stat packs. They just slip slowly into a
calm sleep and slide into their own oblivion. Like euthanasia to
sick puppies, crying puppies wailing for their mothers and begging
god not to live, to be free of this place, and often begging for
death. To them the god that has placed them here, is the same one
that decided the depth of their wounds”

“
How many?” she
asks.

“
Thousands,” Mickey says
proudly, almost in praise of himself.

“
You're a hero,” she says
from the side of her mouth and straight to his face.

“
Thank you very much. It's
so nice that you understand.”

“
How'd you get here?” cider
asks.

“
Well I saved myself in the
end. I finally escaped from the trenches hell. Anyway, there is
where I woke from sleep, under that tree. In the same place to see
the same day, the day of my death as every day.”

“
For how long?” he
asks.

“
Forever.”

“
Or maybe for the number of
lives you took, uh saved,” she says.

“
Home,” the medic says
pointing to the unblemished square steeple, with the fumes of a
fireplace falling from the top of its stone chimney. Surrounded by
a small vegetable garden with thick blankets of vines wrapping a
third of the beige mortar walls. A small steeple that at one time
was used by the soldiers to pray.