Travesty (SolarSide Book 1)

by Austin Aragon

  There you go my little warrior. There you go.

  Cloud? Cloud!

  Only the wind…

  The nightmares remain—because Cloud, you only come here and there. Never when I need you!

  Another day, we are all summoned by Blake and begin a routine patrol; this time though, there is believed rebel activity. I am fucked. I was able to convince Tommy to let me carry the med bag. Our patrols normally rotate with two med bags, one for outgoing and one for base. I’ve kept control of base bag—the nearly empty one—for the past few days now. But now that we are all heading out, both bags are in action with us. I don’t know how I’ll pull off explaining the bag half empty when it comes to opening it. I’ve been able to buy morphine from the village boy instead lately, but that doesn’t change the fact I have too much missing here for a simple write-off.

  Vance is the other carrier today, and I try to stay close to him that way when need be, it won’t be suspicious if he reaches the casualty first.

  “Private Peter!” My neck hair shoots out.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Why are both my medics near each other? One grenade you are both gone. Make me a goddamn sandwich now!”

  I move to the rear while Vance is second to front.

  The particular path we take today leads us into an agricultural zone. The jungle is cleared back a hundred meters on each side of the road by the natives to grow their nuts and rice. A dike runs parallel on both sides as well, the dirty water trickling along a few centimeters high. Dmitry, our field engineer and explosives specialist leads in the front with his IED detection robot. The robot is a four wheeled, waist high, surveyor platform that scans the terrain for irregularities that would suggest recent digging activities to place a bomb. As we move along some more, the robot’s rear arm shoots up signaling it has found something of concern. Dmitry raises his arm and we kneel on each side of the road, rifles raised. My barrel tip follows a puff of humming insects to my side. Die, little alien bastards. You traitorous rebel sympathizers. For what else could they be? They attack us day in and out, requiring us to take continuous medication to repel any alien pathogen they might harbor. Isaac likes to say the Herculeans dropped them off before they arrived as a pre-invasion to the real one.

  “Checking it out,” says Dmitry. The robot goes forward, placing down small flags with its extended arm onto parts of the road it has designated as potentially dangerous. A slight tingle resonates inside of my belly. The morphine—Cloud sorry, she hates being named incorrectly—is keeping me well, but I haven’t had Buzz in a long time. All I remember, is that the last time I had it, it made me do something terrible, but at the same time, it was also the last time I ever cared about anything. It gave me purpose, a sense of direction—didn’t I use to have that, even before the war too?

  You still do Peter, with me.

  Cloud? Is that you?

  Yes. Now hush my little warrior.

  I look around to get whatever it is off my mind since the insects have stopped entertaining me. I view the rows of neatly created dirt mounds growing nuts on the side of the road. Every five rows, there is a slightly larger gap, probably so the farmers can walk through the irrigation easily. One of these bigger gaps is about a few meters away from me, and I notice a small wooden stake sticking out of the dike near the gap. From the center of the stake, betrayed by the sunlight, is a glistening metal wire that runs off into the jungle. I lean off the road over the dike to get a better view of it. The metal wire also goes inside the ground, directly underneath the road we are on. I look over at the opposite side. Yahir is the closet to where I would need someone to look. Actually, he would practically be right on top of the stake from where he is, if there is one. “Hey!” I call at him, they all look over. “Yahir, is there a stake sticking out in the dike by you?”

  He looks over. “Yes, why?”

  Before I can talk, Blake looks at the discovery by Yahir, and then runs over to me to see mine. “Shit!” Blake turns to Dmitry up ahead. The robot is far up the path and Dmitry has his explosive removal equipment out for the first flag. “Specialist Dmitry!” Dmitry now on his knees glances back at him. A burst of gunfire grabs our attention. The rounds were fired from down the road a way. The dirt on the road kicks up into little clouds and the robot flips over destroyed and smoking. Dmitry drops his tools and runs back towards us but the road explodes between us.

  I fall back, Blake on top of me. “Are you hurt?” he coughs.

  “No.” I don’t believe so at least. I am numb from the loud explosion, that annoying ringing in my ears dwarfing everything else.

  “Get to cover!” says Blake.

  I do the simple procedure of rolling over into the dike right next to me, getting covered in mud as I crawl back up to aim my rife over the road. Our unit lights up the jungle tree line from where we best believe the first burst came from. On the other side of the road I hear screaming and look over. The road where the wire ran under is now a ripped up slit of soft earth. The screaming is coming from Yahir. He is on his side, his arms grabbing Alex and Isaac tightly. Blake kneels before him, then moves out of the way while talking on his radio, and I see why he’s screaming. His right leg is blown off up to the calf, bits of his boot strewn about. Vance reaches him first—thank god.

  “Stay in cover!” says Blake. “Stay alert!”

  Rommel behind me yells out, “We get Buzz?”

  “No! This is a defensive maneuver, you are to keep your ass right there!”

  Isaac and Alex carry Yahir as Dmitry follows, and Blake throws a green smoke canister farther down the road.

  “This your fault!” says Yahir at Dmitry, foam in his mouth. “You failed. You—agh!—you skipped that mine on purpose Russian filth! To kill me!”

  “No! I swear! Sorry!”

  Blake pushes Dmitry away after whispering in his ear. Dmitry goes and sits crisscrossed on the side of the road near the dike, crying quietly into his hands.

  “You Russians take everything from me! You are real enemy!”

  Louder explosions follow next that causes everyone to duck. But we quickly discover it is only battalion artillery hitting the road up away. Huge mushrooms clouds of dirt and smoke rise into the air as trees are flung about. We stopped firing into the jungle a while ago, but I guess Blake wanted ordinance for full effect. The hum of the little bird coming for Yahir carries in through the exploding salvos. Rommel sits by me, kicking away at the water in the dike, causing it to fly about. Some lands on me.

  “Stop it,” I croak.

  “It must tear you down, huh?”

  I look over at him, hardly begging him to continue with my current facial expression.

  “Thinking that it’s little terrors like me; Rommel’s who are fighting this war. That the war isn’t being fought by people with great moral compasses and crusader ambitions. That the whole war isn’t one big good versus evil showdown. Instead, it’s little monster Rommel’s who like to kill, fighting it.

  “You think I’m an animal, you think you’re better than me. But here’s a little secret, when that Buzz goes in you, you too, like the war as much as me. You too, are an animal. And that must be what really gets at you, huh? You’d be the type of guy that would sit smug and cush at his college, writing away about some war or event in a war. Write some cute essay about it all, and then you’ll turn it in, and everyone will politely applaud. Saying how they never looked at it that way, saying good job, that was really interesting.

  “But here, you’re the person that should be writing about it, but you’re now also the person who can’t. Sucks, huh? If you were only born a few years after this, you would grow up in that cush life you used to have, untouched, and you would be writing about this war happening right now. But instead, you’re in it too. And some other Peter, some other faceless college kid will instead write about this. They’ll write about Khaf’Jadeed, won’t they? They’ll write about how it was wrong or something. Not really c
aring about those involved in it, just like you wrote about some war long ago in college yourself, never knowing anything about the guy who actually fought in it, and now that’s who you are, who we are. All you’ll ever amount to now, is just to be some half-thought-out course material for some college kid who has to do an assignment.”

  You don’t have to listen to this Peter.

  My hands grip my rifle tightly. Quiet, Cloud.

  He’s wrong, you don’t…

  Quiet Cloud!

  “You’ll just be his little essay wrote late at night the day before, so he could turn it in time the next morning, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be his little A-plus. And everyone will politely applaud the kid. Saying how they never looked at it that way, saying good job, that was really interesting. And that’s it. That’s all they’ll ever remember of you, never actually you, but what you were, a faceless soldier, unknowingly to them, who just happened to be a part of it all. Just one of the sinners in the sin. Must really tear you down, huh?”

  Rommel scratches at his neck underneath his collar, causing his necklace of rotten appendages to wiggle about. “Well maybe if you grow up a little, you can instead look at this war like a Rommel, and actually end up enjoying yourself.”

  “Fuck. Shut up,” I say. “We may be animals, but the difference between us, is that I never chose to be. I was forced. You chose way before this war happened to be one, and if this war never did happen, you would have never had a reason to exist.”

  He looks at me, then smiles as he slugs his XM over his shoulder to fall in after Blake calls. “You’re right. Now look where we are though. In a war, and you chose to be a scholar, but look again. Here, you, don’t have a reason to exist.”

  “Where’s Private Peter!” says Blake.

  I am still in the dike, my hands sweating against the rifle barrel.

  I told you, Peter.

  We can no longer visit the village as of recent rebel activity. My stash dwindles and I am forced to take from the med bag again, shooting up every chance I get. But it’s not the same as her, like I remember. She’s there, but I can tell it’s in a different way, as if she is angry I am reaching her through different means—it’s all I have though. And the one time I did have her I shoved her off. What have I done? And ever since Cloud disappeared after Yahir left, they torment me like they used to, asking why they’re dead, asking me to kill myself already… I don’t know why I haven’t yet.

  We waste more days in the jungle. I waste more days waiting for her. The transition of duties becomes a blur. I am on sentry once again. I go to piss and scare myself. My belt loosened more than I intended revealing my hip. But it is just hip bone, with a layer of pale over it. What do my ribs look like? Then I realize one morning, the nightmares have stopped despite no increase of morphine use.

  On our—tenth?—day I wake in the dead of night, the cold grasps all around me, penetrating the holes of my blanket and making the stars look bright and beautiful. I gaze at those silent spectators of this war. I feel terribly alone, afraid. Why? What more can this war brew forth that I have not been scared and scarred by? But yet I feel terribly alone, afraid. This was an entirely new sensation, different from the usual anxiety attacks, or anything. This feeling of being terrible alone, afraid, it grows, it grows into paranoia, into a real thing, a creature, it is crawling around inside of me—I have to get it out! It goes up my spine, into my trembling hands—get away! My whole body trembles. I have to get away! I break out of my sleeping bag and grab my morphine. The sentry and his light turns to me. I run. He yells and chases after me. He grabs and tackles me.

  “Peter,” he says in a hush. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I look back, I feel like crying. “Isaac…”

  I stop talking and stare at him. He looks back as if he understands. As if he too experiences the same thing every night. He speaks, “What is it man? A nightmare?”

  It strikes me with a new force: the fear and paranoia. How I feel so terribly alone and afraid, it takes over with a new strength that I can’t control and I fall against his chest crying. “I, I haven’t had a good dream since…since we came here. And a nightmare for a few days now.” Isaac looks up at the stars, his face a gray shape under the dark jungle canopy.

  I regain control from my coughing and spitting fit. I move over to sit, breathing in the cold air slowly. “I used to have nightmares when we first came here, horrible ones that terrified me. But I knew that if at least I had nightmares, it was me reminding myself that I don’t belong here, in this war. But now,” I pause as the terrible feeling of being alone, afraid, courses through my body as I come upon the truth. “Now, I don’t even have nightmares. I have become the thing I feared, hated! I became my nightmares Isaac! I’ve stopped rebelling and protesting the war and my fate even in my own mind, even in my own subconscious when I sleep, in my own dreams! I have become one with the monster. I am dead.”

  After a while Isaac leans over to talk, “I haven’t had any dreams either. Instead my nightmares have become reality, that is, this war. That’s what you just told me right?” I don’t say anything. I roll over onto my back to look at the stars, they look back at me. The cold wind drying the tear trails from my cheeks. I fumble with the syringe in my pocket. It’s already loaded with a dose. Isaac goes on, “The only way I fall asleep now, is by giving up. I used to stay awake for the whole night, in agony and self-hate at what I done the day before. Killing people, fighting this war! Then I finally got sick, not just physically sick Peter, from lack of sleep, but my soul too, it was sick. So I stopped trying. I gave up because I couldn’t handle fighting the illness in my spirit after fighting in the war all day. And I do it every night, I just give up. It’s the only way I can fall asleep now.”

  He slouches down near me and stares at the sky. “Shouldn’t you keep on duty, I’m sorry to have distracted you,” I say.

  “Fuck sentry, if we’re attacked at night we would be dead anyway.”

  Isaac takes out his ancients and we smoke. I silently retrieve my syringe and cradle it in my hand against my thigh. We stare at the constellations and distant suns, terribly alone and afraid. But it’s a loneliness we both share. That all of us in the unit share. We’re alone together. We stopped dreaming together. About our future, our plans, our aspirations, even just getting off this fucking planet. We stopped dreaming and hoping. The emptiness in our dreams is a reflection of the emptiness in our hearts. And in that emptiness, that once was full as we grew up as the Golden Generation back on Earth, that is going to college, getting shitty nine to five jobs, falling in love—it has all been cast away and replaced with a brooding darkness. That is why we don’t dream anymore, in the back of our minds and hearts, it has become dark. Our very souls. Dark. We have all become consumed by it.

  Isaac gets up to wake the next sentry for his turn. I look out at the surrounding black jungle canopy, and its dark shadowy overcast it places onto the clearing during night. That dark jungle that I can hardly see the outline of…is brighter than me. This dark canopy is a not a shadow from the lack of light in the sky, but a projection of something else, of something in me. I am the shadow’s creator. It’s source.

  I shoot up quickly. I’m almost calm. Good enough.

  The jungle is still dark. The stars still shine. I still wait for her.

  But she doesn’t come.

  XXII

  Sometime on our second week, a war journalist arrives at our foxholes with a chopper dropping off routine supplies.

  “They’re sending news guys out here now?” says Vick.

  “All they’re going to see, is us playing cat and mouse with the fucking locals,” gripes Isaac.

  Blake crawls out of his fox hole, shaving cream still applied to his lower face, to meet the journalist.

  “Are you the leading officer here?” says the journalist.

  “Yes I am ,” says Blake.

  “Great, I was told I could be embedded
with your unit for a few days.”

  “Why the hell would you want to do that?” says Blake.

  “Yeah, shit is boring out here man,” says Rommel. “No Herc’s to fight, just a bunch of pissed off natives.”

  “Exactly why I am here,” says the journalist, now with excitement rising in his tone. “Everyone and their goddamn mothers who is arriving to report this war, is out trying to find a way to reach the frontlines where the Herculeans and Coalition are duking it out. Obviously, for safety, most of them are being denied. So instead they just mope around the countryside taking pictures of dead aliens and other pointless filler for the night column.”

  “So that’s why you ended up here?” I say.

  He stares at us, his face full of energy to match his excitement. “Yes and no. I didn’t even try to get embedded with some frontline unit, because I knew it would be a waste of my time. I purposely came out here to view the part of the war no one talks about, or even knows about back on Earth.”

  “You’ll probably be disappointed,” says Blake as he goes back to his foxhole to finish shaving.

  We go back to our posts as well, killing time by aiming our guns at the jungle like every other day before. The journalist skitters behind me to my foxhole.

  I, Vance, and Tommy slide into our hole and lie down against the earth wall to rest. Isaac stops near the edge and turns around facing the approaching journalist, and unzips his fly to begin pissing on the ground before him.

  “Whoa, what the fuck?” says the journalist dodging his stream, he walks around him to reach our hole.

  “You better get used to it paperboy,” says Isaac, “‘cause this is all you’re going to get coming out here. Getting pissed on like the rest of us.”

  “My name isn’t paperboy, it’s Thomas,” he says as he slides down into the foxhole with us.

  “What do you want?” snorts Vance, hitting his vapstick.

  “You sure know how to make a guy feel welcomed,” says Thomas.