The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey (33 page)

With only two weeks left to complete his training, John was anticipating that his final day in the Simulator would be an actual representation of the world of Red that he would be experiencing once he received his orders for deployment. Michaels and Crawford had been playing along with him as team members on its bloody sands for the past several days, allowing him to give the orders and set the tempo for the kills. The increase in the volume of the “deserters” had grown significantly, and John and his group were tasked with eliminating crews of “soldiers” consisting of men and women that outnumbered them at least eight to
one.

The Simulator had been consistently evolving more and more into a miniature battlefield throughout the progression of the exercises. The exploding bodies and constant barrages of incoming fire made the adrenalin fill the veins, the senses more keen. It was John’s own little war, narrow and confined, such as that with which he fought daily in his mind.

The final test of elimination had been set into motion not less than two hours ago. John was prone in the sand, inching his way up an embankment, trying to get a better feel for the enemy’s position. Crawford and Michaels were hunkered down at the bottom of a nearby knoll awaiting their orders.

Using, the torn and broken lower extremities of one of the dead for cover, John peered through the holes in the flesh, spying out the rocky outcropping that was a common area for the prey to take refuge.

After several minutes of patiently waiting, he caught sight of a single movement from the shade of a boulder: the flapping facial scarf of one of the deserters whipping momentarily into the air. Crawling back down the embankment, he duck-walked his way to his “team”.

“We need to make a three way split,” he said.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Crawford replied.

“Just don’t get us killed,” Michaels retorted. “Make sure you know what you’re getting us into.”

John detailed the three paths that each one of them would take in order to surround the deserters’ fortification. The team would form a triangle around the holdout that would allow the crossfire to catch everyone in its net. The plan was approved by both of his instructors as a legitimate answer to the problem. If they pulled it off it would be John’s final test in the Simulator. With their orders doled out, the three men split their ways and began their slow, steady courses towards their assigned positions.

After being separated for a minute, Michaels called back to John, “Hey, Sweeper!”

Taken by surprise by the sudden change in tone, John glanced back over his shoulder. Michaels and Crawford both gave a thumbs-up, smiling out of the corners of their mouths. They were proud of him, as if he had been the son of their creation. John returned the hand gesture, but saved the smile for another time.

The rocky formation stood approximately four hundred meters towards the rising of the Great Star. Camouflaged with the blood of a fallen “soldier”, John moved along the crimson sand, slithering through the carcasses and burnt out vehicles. Through his binoculars he could see Michaels head, like a tiny pin top, bobbing and weaving along the opposing ridge as he made his way towards his appointed place.

The accumulating anxiety of the deserters was growing ever more strenuous on their shoulders, as they seemed to be peering out from the rocks with a greater frequency. It was as if they knew their end was at hand.

After nearly an hour the two men called in through John’s earpiece that they were in position. The visibility was phenomenal regarding their victims. As the recon data began streaming in from his team members regarding the targets within their respective sights, John understood that Crawford and Michaels were situated in such a manner as to allow them to see several soldiers of which the other could not. Once the shots began to fly, there was no hope for any of those in hiding to escape.

“Whenever you’re ready, just give the word, Killer,” Crawford’s voice crackled in John’s ear.

John snarled with irritation. He hated the man. Pulling his scoped rifle up to his cheek, he could make out a young male with his hand pressed down on the shoulders of one of his women comrades. His protective posture with regards to her safety was intriguing. Finding it difficult to keep them within his sights as they bobbed up and down searching for their pursuers, he took in a deep breath, leaving them alone and placing the crosshairs on the armed man kneeling at their side.

“On my shot,” he said, exhaling into the mic. “Three…”

His fingertip rubbed the hot steel of the trigger.

“Two…”

Observing the heat waves rising along his line of sight, shimmering horizontal then vertical, then back to the horizon, John steadied his aim, compensating for the wind and for the bullet’s drop. Aiming high and to the right of the target he and his weapon were one, an organic whole.

“One…”

Squeezing the trigger, the hammer dropped, initiating the chemical reaction within the compound contained in the primer. With a flash of powder the bullet propelled from the muzzle, roaring across the blood-wasted battlegrounds. It entered into the rocky formation, sailing above the heads of the deserters, rocketing towards its primary destination. Tearing apart the air in its path, it bid farewell to the enemy’s fortification as it retreated from the towering boulders, leaving them behind and sailing across the open valley. Finally making contact with its intended victim, it burrowed deep into the head of Crawford, exiting out the posterior aspect of his skull with a cloudy, red
mist.

John watched his body crumpling over, disappearing somewhere on the other side of the ridge where he had been perched seconds earlier. His
instructor
was now nowhere to be seen.

Unaware of his fallen comrade, Michaels continued to fire into the enemy, dropping dead each man with every single bullet that left his barrel. In a display of panic, the men and women fled from their rocky coverings like the scattering of ants when their hill is exposed to pooling water.

Peering through his scope, John watched the terrified couple as they worked their way to the base of the outcropping. Two shots echoed from the direction of Michael’s position. Two bodies fell. The woman appeared to be alive, crawling upon her bleeding belly, reaching out for her dead companion. Another echoing blast and she became motionless. Taking aim at the other fleeing members of the group, John began to take them down one-by-one, until they were no more.

“I think we got ‘em all, John,” Michaels whooped. “What a blast. It never gets old, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” John replied.

“Hey, Crawford, how many did you get?” Michaels laughed, but there was no response. “Crawford, are you there?”

“Crawford, it’s John. Everything alright?” John said into the mic, feigning to be concerned.

“I’m trying to scope him out, John. I can’t find him anywhere,” Michaels said with concern.

Pulling Michaels up in the crosshairs, John could see that he was desperately scanning about for his friend.

“I’ll meet you at the rocks,” he said. “We need to stick together to find him. Maybe one of the targets got away.”

After a long pause, Michaels voice came through, “Roger that.”

Sliding the rifle to his back, John pulled himself up and headed towards his rocky destiny. Withdrawing his sidearm with a partial pullback of the weapon’s slide, he made certain it was charged and ready to go.

With the firearm held by his thigh, he walked through the wasteland with his eye on the speckled dot named Michaels that was cautiously making its way towards the same destination from the distant, sandy formations. Sweaty and calloused, the palm of John’s hands found no relief from the heat. His knuckles whitened under the heavy clenching of his fist around the pistol. He had waited six months for this day… six long months.

Entering into the cleft of the outcropping, Michaels stepped out from between two large boulders.

“I can’t believe they got him. Twenty years in this business. I didn’t think…”

The report of John’s handgun put a stop to his mouth. The man fell to the ground gasping under the pain and pressing against the bone-fragmented hole that had formed through his kneecap. The smoke from John’s barrel seeped from the muzzle as he moved closer, becoming more intimate with his latest victim.

Sliding the rifle from his back, Michaels made a desperate attempt for the trigger, but he was not quick enough. Met with another heavy explosion of John’s pistol, the bullet tore through Michaels’ elbow, leaving his forearm dangling like a bough snapped from the trunk of a tree. He screamed under the intense burning, grabbing at the remnants of his arm.

“You two told me in so much detail about Sofia’s death, remember?” John asked with cold rhetoric.

“We didn’t have anything to do with that, John. Really, we didn’t,” Michaels cried.

“But with the kind of detail that you did have, you must have been eye witnesses to the sufferings of her last day, right?”

“Look, John, it’s what we were told. You’ve got to believe me. I don’t know anything else about her. Just let me live, and I’ll say the deserters did this to us, okay? I promise. Just let…”

Another report echoed throughout the walls of the outcropping as Michaels screamed out in pain. Holstering his weapon, John pulled his knife from the sheath at the small of his back. Its sharp, blackened blade swayed back and forth to the rhythm of his gait as he slowly closed in.

Michaels fought to scoot away, but his broken, bloody stumps were of no use, he was unable to move. John stepped into his personal space with a sudden burst of rage. Grabbing his enemy by the hair, he thrust the edged weapon deep into the side of Michaels’ skull, using it as a handle to manipulate his instructor’s head around. Twisting it back he forced the man to look him in the eyes.

“I know you’re in pain, comrade. But from what you people have done to me, this is nothing in comparison. My whole existence
is
pain
.”

Handing Michaels the smile that he owed him, John ripped the knife out, slashing it across the throat and thrusting him to the sand to finish his last moments of life gurgling and choking in his own blood. After wiping the blade off, smearing the liquid life upon the dying man’s shirt, John slid the knife back into its
sheath.

Leaving the dead behind, John climbed into the rocky fortification, lifting up a rifle from the hand of one of the deceased soldiers. Turning it back upon himself, he fired a single shot into the flesh of his thigh, and then another into his gut.

The red stream of life dripping from his body felt thick and warm. Blanketed under the heat of the Great Star above, John felt the claustrophobic suffocation that sometimes came to him during the lonely nights in his Room of Death. Holding pressure to the wounds, he clicked his microphone on, transmitting to the Sweeper Training Headquarters, informing them of the casualties and the hard fought exchange that took place between his team and the enemy.

“I’m wounded, sir,” John panted into the microphone. “I think they got Michaels and Crawford. I need help.”

It was only a matter of time before a medical team would be escorted to his position. He had to keep his story straight. His only hope, now, was that he had passed the final test.

The squeezing sensation around the abdomen that Sofia was feeling was, according to Maryanne, a normal part of the process of carrying a child in the womb. It was a natural reminder from her body for the past two and a half months, letting her know that the birth was coming sooner rather than later.

“It’s telling you that it’s time to get mentally prepared,” Maryanne would say.

As the intensity of the contractions had, over the past few days, been increasing in duration, Sofia was beginning to feel the anxiety about the delivery.

“Don’t worry. I promise I’ll be there to help you through it,” Maryanne said, repeating her words in the same manner as she had done on many past occasions.

Sofia shuffled her feet upon the floor as they hung over the side of her cot. She was not particularly fond of pain. Having been a witness to Maryanne’s recent birth, she was not all that certain that she could endure the suffering in the way that Maryanne did, and with such grace, to boot.