Into the Fire

by Mark Tufo

  “I think you’re missing the point. It is because of us that you were exposed to this danger at all,” Drababan said.

  Yodell dismissed Dee’s words with a wave of his hand. “You should not interrupt when a man is saying thank you. I don’t know how things are on your planet but we already have a difficult enough time expressing our feelings.” He smiled.

  Drababan waited until they were off the main roadway before he spoke again. “Tony, could you reach into my bag, I cannot shift properly enough to do so. Please grab the first aid kit. I would like to dress your wound before it festers.” Travis had shifted so he could peer around Dee to his grandfather.

  “Do you want me to pull over so you can work on it?” Yodell said as he looked over.

  “I do not think that wise. The best course of action is for us to keep moving. Tony, you will have to place your leg on my lap so I can see it.”

  Yodell reached over and turned on the cab light.

  “Thank you.”

  “Is it bad?” Tony asked once he had his leg propped up.

  “The flesh is burned. Second degree in a couple of places, but otherwise you should heal up well,” he said as he placed some medicated balm on the wound. “I can understand why the Devastator troops wanted to eat you, Yodell.”

  “You can?”

  “Yes, roasted human flesh smells delicious. I am having all sorts of conflicting emotions at this very moment.”

  “Is he serious?” a nervous Yodell asked, sitting forward to look at Tony.

  “Oh, I doubt it. He has a dry sense of humor with apparently a macabre twist to it. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him eat meat. Human or otherwise.”

  “An alien with a sense of humor. Who would have thought it,” a visibly calmer Yodell said as he sat back.

  Chapter 12

  CHAPTER TWELVE – MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 7

  It was not difficult finding the Mutes. They were like any other victorious invading force—loud, almost obnoxiously so. They’d set up a camp that looked like it could have been a square mile, if they actually did anything quite that orderly, I mean. It looked more like some weird geometric shape that I’m sure one or more of my math teachers had tried to shove in a head that was clearly labeled as “outgoing only.”

  “Doesn’t look like they’re overly concerned with security,” Tracy said as she handed me the binoculars. We were on a mesa a good three miles away and overlooking the entire operation.

  “Why should they be?” I asked as I grabbed them. “They have air support and perimeter visibility for what looks like a damn mile in any direction. Add to that their general douchebaggery and you can see why they don’t care about us doing anything.”

  “Douchebaggery?”

  “Just made it up,” I told BT proudly.

  “Yeah, I figured that.”

  “You sure about this, Mike?” Tracy asked.

  “Of course not, it’s just something that needs to be done.”

  “What exactly needs to be done?”

  “I’m going to crawl down there with the thermal inhibiting Ghillie suit, paint the bastards with a laser, and let some artillery shell them back to the swamps they belong in.”

  “You going alone?”

  “There’s only one suit. Plus, you guys are going to have to drive the truck down there and pick my ass up once the fireworks start. This is about as comfortable as burlap,” I said as I started putting the suit on.

  “You have a lot of reason to wear burlap as a kid?” BT asked as he helped me in.

  “Someday you’ll learn.” Tracy was talking to BT as she placed some local fauna into the netting in the back of the suit.

  “We grew up poor, the thirty-eight of us in the orphanage. All we had for clothing was the sacks that the rice and the flour came in. I’m just grateful that I usually didn’t get the part that said Grade A on it—those kids got teased mercilessly. If you were real lucky, there would still be some grains of rice embedded in the fabric and you could occasionally get a snack throughout the day.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “Oh, he’s not done yet. He just goes on and on. I don’t even think he needs an audience.” Tracy made sure to stick me with the branch she was placing.

  “It was poor Bobby Pontain that actually died from abrasion poisoning. He’d been so covered in scrapes that the doctors said there was nothing they could do to save him. So yeah, maybe I have had reason to be overly sensitive to the plight of those who have had to wear burlap,” I said as I wiped a fictitious tear from my eye. “Poor Bobby,” I sniffed.

  “Is he done yet?”

  Tracy peered around to my face. “I think so.”

  “Shit, how much does this thing weigh? BT, did she tie rocks on the back?”

  “No, but I wish I’d thought of that,” he replied.

  “It’s going to get heavier.” Tracy started shoving water bottles into every available pocket I had. “You’re going to need this as well.” She handed me an oversized walkie-talkie.

  “You do realize I have to crawl on the ground,” I said as she started to use my front pockets.

  “I’d rather you were a little uncomfortable than die from dehydration.” She shoved the bottles in.

  “How close do you have to get to light them up?”

  I looked to Tracy. I wasn’t even sure what to tell him.

  “Thousand yards, half mile or so,” she said.

  “I have to crawl for two and a half miles? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “You forget the part about you volunteering?” Tracy grabbed my face. “I’m being serious right now, Mike, so I want you to dig down deep and try to find that part of you that can be serious with me.”

  “I’ll try,” I told her honestly.

  “The ambient air temperature is somewhere around eighty-five degrees, you are going to start to boil in this suit. You need to hydrate continuously, and at times you will have to vent.”

  “Won’t they see him?” BT asked.

  “There’s no choice, he’ll overheat before they have a chance to shoot him.”

  “Wow, this just gets better and better. Why do I have such a problem with thinking things through? I mean isn’t that how prehistoric man made it into un-prehistoric times?”

  “You mean modern times?” BT queried.

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Barely,” he retorted.

  “One sentence, Mike. You need to let me get out one serious sentence.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s not intentional.”

  “When you are certain they are not looking in your direction, you will need to undo the suit. It will be imperative that you let some heat escape.”

  I would have come back with something like, “because I’m too hot to handle” but I was already feeling the effects. The suit was somewhere in the fifty pound range, and the heavy rubber insulated filament fibers were keeping all of my body heat in. I was already sweating profusely; I could feel it running down my legs and beginning to pool in the bottoms of my boots. This shit kept up and I would literally be in danger of drowning.

  “You good, man?” BT asked.

  “I was, but now I’m realizing just how much this sucks.”

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  “I love you, Mike, and I want you back, don’t do anything to screw that up.” Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me, before plopping my helmet on.

  I traversed the small hill we were on and felt pretty good for the first couple of hundred yards. Then I started to really feel the effects of the heat. My skin was feeling all prickly. It was that same feeling you get when it’s a hot summer day and you get into a car that has been sitting in a parking lot all day with the sun blazing down on it, sort of that opening of an oven door quality. I could now hear my footsteps as they sloshed in the puddles I was creating.

  Mercifully, the sun was finally beginning its downward migration. I’d done some
where in the neighborhood of a mile. The first half I figured I was alright to stay upright, but then Tracy said through the radio that it might behoove me to get low. Yeah, she actually said behoove. Not more than two minutes later, I could hear the whine of an aircraft approaching. I kept my head down and didn’t move. I was expecting to see a line of impacts from rounds approach me and then send me packing from this life to the next. I wondered if the transition would be painless. I was still thinking about how the reunion with my mother, Deb, Stephanie, Dennis and countless others I had lost along the way would be. On one end of the spectrum, it would be great to see them, but would I still be able to check in on Tracy and Travis? And just like that, the machine had moved on. The suit worked.

  My knees and elbows ached as I dragged myself over the rocky terrain. Not to mention my back felt like someone had jabbed a short-bladed knife in it and was now working it slowly back and forth along the small of my spine. I was not sure when it came time to stand and run that I would even be able to. I’d stopped looking at the compound, as no matter how much I crawled, it never appeared to get any closer. For a while, I would radio Tracy for a location update. I stopped after her last response.

  “Mike, you haven’t moved since the last time you asked.”

  “I was hoping that maybe they had decided to come closer.” I hung my head lower, my forehead touching the ground. I was spent; the inside of the suit was coated in sweat. I was beginning to have a hard time concentrating, and things were beginning to get foggy in my head.

  “Need to clean the swimming pool…who keeps playing loud music?” I asked.

  “Mike, vent now.” Tracy sounded a little worried, but she wasn’t yelling yet.

  “I think fish like to ride buses.” That was my response, although she had to tell me that later. I still don’t believe her. BT probably told her to say that.

  “Mike, pull down your zipper!” she shouted loud enough that it cut through the haze.

  “Oh, now you say that when I’m two miles away.”

  “You’re potentially dying from heat stroke and you make a sexual innuendo? Mike, vent your fucking suit now, or I swear I’ll come down there and do it myself.”

  “Beans are the magical fruit.” Even I could tell I was starting to lose it. I rolled over, my hands coming up to my throat. I was having a difficult time as I fumbled for the zipper. Between the gloves and my loss of coordination, I was in trouble of frying like an overturned turtle.

  “Pull off your glove!” BT yelled into the mic.

  “Wish I’d thought of that.” I was being serious as I gripped the fingertips of my right hand with my left and yanked. If it didn’t come off in one try I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to muster the strength for a second go around. Just the feeling of the relatively cool air hitting my hand was difficult to describe. Relief, I suppose is a good verb, or is it an adverb?

  As soon as my body realized that there was this intense new feeling available, I couldn’t pull that zipper down fast enough. I swear steam rose up from me as I yanked that thing almost all the way down to my crotch. I pulled the two sides of the suit apart like I was displaying my Superman logo and then I just let my head fall back to the ground. At this very second, I didn’t care if the Progs or Mutes found me, I was just reveling in the feeling of not self-basting.

  “Drone,” came through the speaker.

  “Fuck me,” I answered not much above a whisper.

  “You’re about to get that in spades,” BT said. “Zip back up.”

  “One says zip down, the other zip up. You guys should get your story straight.” I still hadn’t come to the determination if I gave a shit or not. I’d either cooked my brain too much or the cooling euphoria was obscuring my judgment.

  “Mike, it’s less than a mile from you and coming directly your way.” It was a panicked Tracy. I had yet to move, the mere thought of closing myself back up into that self-immolating inferno of a tomb was keeping me from doing what I needed to. “I will shoot at it!” she yelled.

  I knew what that meant, she would be drawing the drone away from me and it would go directly at them, unleashing I would imagine its own special version of hell on earth. I’d be damned if I allowed that to happen. I reluctantly pulled the suit tight. Just as I did so I heard a high-pitched whine of something definitely mechanical but not of this world. How astute am I? (By the way, that’s sarcasm just so you know.) The pitch was just...off, I guess. Like maybe a chipmunk had gotten its balls stuck in a blender. Yeah, I guess that’s it, I mean, if something like that was even plausible. Seems like they wouldn’t hang down low enough to get chopped up by the blades.

  My gnashed nuts thought would have to go on hold for the moment. The drone was literally hovering about two hundred feet up directly over me. I didn’t move. I had my ungloved right hand hidden under my left. Sweat was pouring off my forehead, some going into my eyes. The desire to rip my helmet off and wipe my face was becoming my all-consuming thought. The sun was blazing along the glass barrier, creating my own greenhouse effect. That machine stayed there longer than it had a right to, a fair part of me just wanted it to fire its payload so I could go into the afterlife and mop up my mug. That alone would make it worthwhile. Then I started to wonder what the hell it was doing. I mean, if the damn thing was debating that long on if I were the enemy, why not just shoot as a precaution? There was absolutely no way it could confuse me for a Mute, and even if it did, I doubt seriously that the higher-ups gave a shit about friendly fire. For two more sweat-soaked minutes, that thing stayed there before darting off to parts unknown, going back on patrol I guess.

  “That was close,” BT said.

  “Going to have to keep your suit zipped up, Mike. I’m sorry,” Tracy added in at the end. “Have you stopped sweating yet?”

  “I wish,” I told her. “I feel like I’m marinating.”

  “Oh, that’s gross,” BT said.

  “Yeah, try being me.”

  “Naw, you’re too white and small.”

  “What are you implying?” I asked him as I attempted to wrangle my glove back on. It was not cooperating with me. The sweat had cooled and dried on my hand, leaving a coating of sticky salt. Just picture trying to put on tight leather pants after a day of swimming in the ocean and you will understand my dilemma. “Fuck it.” I tossed the glove to the side.

  “Is that wise?” Tracy was watching me through the binoculars.

  “How much of this is actually a good idea?” I asked back.

  “Good point. Mike, the sun should be going down in a little while. There’s a bush about thirty feet to your right, or left when you’re on your stomach. I think you should get out from under the sun as best you can and start moving again at night.”

  “You know when you say it like that, I’m thinking that maybe that’s what I should have done all along.”

  Nobody said anything, what could we say? I’d made a tactical error, and now I was paying the piper. I knew the impetus though, I wanted to get back to Travis as quickly as possible, and I know myself well enough to know I would have been going stir crazy sitting up on that ridge waiting for the sun to do its thing. I would have sat up there for fifteen minutes and gone anyway. I crawled over to the bush, although you should take any memory you may have of a bush and toss it to the side as you read this entry. This was more like a spiny, spindly coat rack rather than bush. If I had bothered to take my discarded glove and hold it over me, it would have offered more refuge from the burning rays of the solar disc that I was basking (basting) in.

  “Try to get some sleep. I will check in with you every twenty minutes.”

  “Hon, how am I going to get some sleep if you’re going to check in every twenty minutes?”

  “That’s not really my problem.” I heard her end click off. My dreams started off strange and only got weirder as the day wore on. Most involved me drinking gallons of water and never feeling sated, one had me swimming in a pool of Chunky Monkey ice cream, which was fine until I got
stuck and could no longer move. Panic had set in at that point, Tracy had called to tell me that the patrol was far enough away, and that I needed to down some water. I didn’t hesitate. The internal temperature of the suit dropped from one hundred twenty to a blissful ninety or so within a couple of minutes as I vented.

  “You only have three minutes, Mike. Drink up and then redo the zipper.”