by Thomas Head
Still do.
An hour passes. More thoughts come—nickel and dime stuff, platitudes we old guys are fond of calling wisdom.
Jagger chokes, makes a hilarious job of waking. When he spits on the floor, he’s gentleman enough to rub it away with his boot. He wipes his mouth, looks across the aisle through the window.
Then he gets wide-eyed.
“What the fuck is that?”
I’m grinning when I turn. Then I’m a wide-eyed idiot, trying to comprehend what I am seeing.
I close my eyes as a dazzling whiteness washes across us. Through us. It feels like I’m dreaming, or immersed in something oceanic, like a storm with great waves of light. The waves are rolling into a greater vastness of being, slipping without gravity. It’s not a horrible feeling, actually.
Then I wonder, half-sideways in this floating state, what hit us, what the fuck fires a ball of light; what sends such a thing up from the jungle?
Then, gunshot quick, the fuselage roars and rolls us onto our sides. My skull buzzes, the cubbyholes rip and netting pops and bags and SOPMOD M4 rifles and night vision goggles and clips of ammo are shredding through the air and crumpling against gasmasks and boots and books and bloody pieces of someone.
The whole world is yelling, moaning and roaring in the wind as somebody’s belt smacks me in the earhole.
I get the helmet strapped tighter while the universe slams back upright and drops. I’ve tore apart my seat in my hands. Shit shooting by. Still have my hands, I do; but we are starting to fall faster than before, and a dog flies by my face. Then a soldier is yanked down the aisle by the force, gun-up, in shock, firing as he flies away outside.
Then we are hit by something again.
And oh shit we’re falling.
Whatever I thought I felt before, in my stomach, this is unbearable. My throat and lungs get punched and jarred and shaken all at once. I am screaming, then aware I’m screaming, and somehow there’s the awareness I have an adrenaline hardon, and now my belly feels spilled open from the back. My spine might prolapse through my ass, and oh shit, more of the plane rips away, and my shoulders twist around past my head while seats with soldiers in them fly by. Jagger is off his nut, laughing his ass off. Hugging me. And in the roar we fall further, and in the chaos and speed, we straighten back out. I’m trying to pray, getting hit by something else. It’s flapping against me. There’s nothing but jaw-twisting pain, but I’m aware someone has kept us leveled us out. But through it all comes this other crackling in my brain, almost more than a noise; it’s louder than the splitting plane, louder than the hurt and the fear, and I’m smashed up the ass by a tree, and the lights go strobing while a helmeted head bounces off the roof and flies by, and there’s the splitting again, and son of a bitch the whole plane is splitting. And a darker sound comes from under us, jagged hell-music, screaming about bones as I’m trying to pray again, telling God that I love life and Christ.
Then I’m thrown, launched back away from a flood of wet leaves shooting into the plane from the ground, branches and vines and other shit to rip at us, and as I fly I know I have to fight this, holding on to something that is flying with me, maybe: I shove and wiggle in the air and for some reason I remind myself I am a person.
Tyler McCarthy. Sniper.
Chapter 3
Savage and odd, the dullness as I wake to the sight of a fireplace and a mantle. I see Grandma. Classic New York Irish, loud and loving. Maybe this is some comfortable microhell, but it seems more likely that it’s just the rootball of some kind of vine-etched tree, aflame, with a twisted, plane-metal smokestack.
A portrait of Grandma, again, grinning affably and flicking me off, maybe, or someone’s socks—several minutes in deciding this.
The right side of me is immersed in something. The same hemisphere of my face is sweaty and hot. A shiny, perfect band of copper with wires shows a purple-eyed version of myself staring back, dumbly, bulbous, barely alive in the light of the thousand little flames. My nose looks like a grizzly starbust, or a gunshot wound in reverse. But it is still there.
I think my legs have not come off, or their ghosts are there, making me feel something as I move my toes.
A tidal wave of rain is slamming down. I feel it. Which seems good. But I feel something else. Maybe I’m falling still, sinking, crashing through the earth. Something ancient and wicked is pulling me. I dig and push upwards to get free of the quickening sand under me; then for some reason before I’m even out I shove my fingers down my pants to feel for my legs. Can’t move my head. And I feel again for my legs, no idea why. Very little down there to prove anything in particular, an inch, two, of leg that I feel confident exists. I move my toes again and I have these inches of flesh at the top of the legs. So I I’ve got my legs and now I can claw at something else to prove. I shove and push like crazy, with all the effort in the world, and all that comes of it is less and less air than before.
Wasn’t actually sinking, I guess.
Hunched weirdly, vibrating from effort and adrenaline, I wriggle onto my back, after more air, and I get more by way of a tear in an incomplete tongue. The tip of it is still in my mouth. With odd reluctance, it has to be spat out.
Of my elbows and fingers, stock is taken again, and I dig out and roll and account for my head and ass. Then I put my hand back down my pants and feel that my dick is still there, in the air, as stiff as a small microphone, and suddenly I can breathe better, but it makes this soaking noise when it goes in.
Flaming little jungle fires spin.
What the shit happened?
I start pulling, scaling this curved wall of plastic, dizzy in the odd angles of firelight. I’m trying to stand and see something, but seeing something will have to wait. I push, crawl, tumble down a slope of mud and metal and hit some sharp black stuff but none of it cuts too badly. When I come to a stop again I’m exhausted.
Sitting in the smell of fuel and clay, I know I already need to rest. I barely know what’s moving, or what my eyes are making move. I’m still spinning in this tick, tick, tick sort of motion, then spinning back some other direction.
Blood’s washing down my chin, booming in my head. I breathe and hold on to a pair of loose teeth in my lower mandible with what remains of my tongue.
Let my eyes adjust.
I hold on, sitting another minute to stop the world’s motion. What the shit? There’s a straight, strange orange and black canyon through the trees. Thin claws of debris spike in every direction. I look at the pieces stretching back through the black and flaming jungle. Did we crash? The plane is gone. It is near morning. Yeah we fucking crashed.
I’m somewhere near a river. Somehow burn marks score my neck under my canvas handkerchief but there is none on the material itself. Tell me how that’s possible. More clumps of bags or bodies are scattered way ahead. More than a mile. Much more. Seat-fabric or soldier’s clothes, is spread across the forest, hanging in shredded flags from trees. I’m seeing an enormous, black-green frog, but it sounds like it is laughing. So maybe that’s in my head.
Craters pock the slick ground. Half of a metal toilet seat. Yeah, there’s water around us, or nearby. I can hear it.
I shake my head, try to work my legs, thinking the test will be a short one but it is a long affair, standing up. I think my stomach might pop out of my scrotum, but it doesn’t. My hip holds my weight. Something, maybe a bird, is poking my back. When I feel back there it is just my gear, ripped and flattened against me.
Never thought of her, I realize. I was dying and she did not cross my mind. That might mean something but I suspect it does not.
I thought of God though. It feels good that I did, like I’m sort of Noah.
I look the other way. I see a soldier ahead now, far off. He stands up, flops over. Beyond him I see somebody else moving. He’s crawling. He stops, falls flat, disappears into a hole. Then he tries to climb up again. I see more pieces of flesh on my chin and it is my chin itself. Broken chin meat.
&nbs
p; Blood’s still going through my teeth, over the buzzing in my ears. I focus on the noise and it turns out to be insects. They sound more and more resolute. My mouth hurts more the more I breathe, but I still want to get more air in. I consider sitting again. I try to sit down, but I wobble and I take a step instead.
Now the noise isn’t insects. Why is it hard to tell?
Someone is yelling, “Hello, please, hello.”
I have to pull my leg to turn to the sound of it, but I see no one. I think I’d know where they were if they spoke again but someone else is screaming now for his dad.
I don’t turn to it. Just got to think. Please. I’m on my feet, I’m up and staying up.
I turn and head for the guy who is screaming. He isn’t here. He’s high in a tree, crawling without moving, like a dog who swims when you hold him over the water. Looking up at him makes me dizzy and I start toward the first two men instead.
This is ridiculous. I walk and the man, the Captain, falls from the tree behind me. I turn yet again, I see that his arm is gone at the elbow. And he’s silent now. Just convulsing. Pass on trying to help. Or even helping him die. Useless waste of energy.
Pass on two more, each just conscious pieces of humans.
There’s more dead, each plastered against trunks, set into the wood like ornaments. Some are half-sitting, some covered in ants, getting eaten already or covered in flies.
The better my eyes work, the worse it becomes. There’s not pity. Not yet. And as I go the rain picks up. It’s not a storm yet. But it’s getting louder. I stop a couple of times and hear strange birds or monkeys as I check the bodies I can get to.
Nobody I check is alive. Three guys ahead are on their feet, and I keep making for them. I can’t check them all.
I almost get near the first guy, finally. But there’s a man sitting down. It’s Weathers, the mechanic. One of the German Shepherds, Jackson or Big Mike is pressed against his leg. Big Mike. He’s more than a dog. In the field a good one’ll make you understand that. The unspoken things. The poor beast is bloodbuckled across his chest and won’t live much longer. Weathers’ legs are broke, very clearly so. His face is dented and he holds out a hand for me to help him.
When I walk past him he starts crying, just sobbing and petting Big Mike.
“I lost all fucking respect for you in Nepal.”
“Yeah?”
“When you let Robbins die,” he says and leans over.
Blood oozes from his ear. He’s a dead man. Won’t be long. I know what he wants—but I doubt I can ease him through it; I look around, no blankets, nothing to cover him. Some bent seats a way off. The right thing to do is holstered at my hip. I can’t. I pull my helmet off, get on my right knee and apologize to him.
He cries, says he’s sorry too, nods.
“McCartney?” Jagger yells.
Hell yeah.
He looks at his leg, looks at me. “How fucked are you?”
I stand, make my way closer. The shock is numbing everything but honing everything to a razor’s accuracy.
“Not sure.”
He smiles. He looks down, lifts his shirt, shows me his side and stomach, which are purple and red and wet. “Got some nasty ass scratches.”
I shake my head.
“Bear’s dead.”
“Who’re they?” I ask, looking ahead at the other two.
“Biggs and Highway.”
Highway would make a good captain, I think.
“Captain’s dead.”
Jagger nods again. He looks at his hand. “Also I lost a finger,” he says.
He shows me the blown-up hand, but I see ten fingers. One of us is in shock, I’m guessing.
“Fuck me,” he says. He tries to say something else, but pukes.
“That will hurt you more than the rest of it,” I tell him. “Try to hold it in.”
“I’m going to shit my pants too, I think.”
“Great.”
Chapter 4
We’ve got to gather ourselves up, get out of the rain. Have to. Right? Lick our wounds. Get a head count. Find a radio. See if the flight data recorder is intact.
Jagger takes some deep breaths. I try not to—you forget how we smell on the inside. Surrounded by smoking fuel, plus the overwhelming perfumes of the rain-beaten jungle, puke still hits the nose with a raunchy punch. I think I see some good ground for a fire, flat and somehow relatively dry against a large section of fuselage. It’s a place with a natural roof of ferns. Shouldn’t be too hard to get a fire going. Plenty of shit around. Still half shock-thinking, maybe, but I think that we need gather what we can and build some kind of shelter too.
People are moaning now, one guy shrieking about serpents from some unknowable place in the jungle. I repeat the word fire to myself yet again in some kind of bizarre mantra. There’s not going to be any dry wood, probably. The minute I think this, Jagger sees me thinking. He slowly, very slowly, nods.
“Hold still,” he says
“Huh?” I say, smoke billowing now out of a thicket of vines. The smoke is coming now without end, blistering my senses. I freeze at the sound of a clip engaging into a pistol.
“What the—”
I look up, see a ruined face. An Indian. The man is smirking as he yanks my pistol from the holster at my hip. Under a Z Company helm, a single eye pivots crazily. He raises his split lip like a dog, Jagger drawing down on him with his 40.
The man pays no attention and as smoke engulfs him, he is gone.
A groan, just behind us, rocks us both out of asking if we just saw that shit. In the same instant, Jagger is knocked off his feet, jabbing upward with his M4.
The Indian is on top of him, his head rocking back. Jagger stabs at him with the barrel, still on his back, then brings the sight up to his eye. Fires. Grazes him hard. Takes a chunk of mouth.
The man leaps. His disfigured jaw is dislocated, blood-burned, freezing his face into the look of a silent howl.
Gasping for air, Jagger gets his feet under him, steps toward the Indian disappearing into the jungle, fires. I’m bashed with something. A boot. A damn boot with a foot in it. Blood is sheeting out of my mouth as I bend to gather Jagger’s 40 off the ground and I stay bent over—another Indian is running at us growling, naked, just a split second away, too close to even raise the weapon.
I reach for the dirk in my boot instead, then lunge into him, sideways and balled-up. The blow sends us both to the ground. I grunt in pain, rolling. Get up.
Both of us have gained our footing. But the naked man drops the instant he stands. Jagger nods, seeing I had landed my knife firmly into the man’s kidney. He steps on the man’s neck to cut a long moan short.
Then I feel more blood coming from my mouth. My chin and chest are red. A shot whirrs under my chin, an arrow.
A dozen Indians are approaching from the right. Three more emerge from the forest, holding lengths of rope or vine. You see in an instant—they have the disciple of veteran campaigners. More out in the distance. In the trees.
Jagger freezes, dropping his M4 at his feet before slowly raising his hands. Ahead of all them, an older man is approaching. He is smaller than the others. With something like a salute, the old man orders the others to lower their weapons.
Then he nods toward the gun at Jagger’s feet.
I cock a swollen eye. Whatever. Take it. Fuck. We just, c’mon, I mean we just crashed.
Everything becomes slow, and the man gets in my face. I know one thing: this is it. I’d seen this before. In China. They won’t shoot an unarmed man.
And so, for all that I have seen and done, and left undone, this is it. The inglorious it. The old man halts, not breathing, not blinking, waiting. I become intensely aware of the river now. The sparkling, pleasant sound of it. The high, thin tickle of the morning sun. Life is a nasty, magical thing, and I have made of it what it I could.
I licked my teeth and spat blood on the old man’s bare foot.
As the man looks down in disgust, I feel
a hot punch rip into the back of my thigh. I’m hit. It is an arrow... a fucking arrow. No. A knife. It is my own dirk. Fire spreads from the wound, locking the leg in place. But I do not fall. Cannot fall. The leg is rigid, shaking.
Baring his teeth, the old man starts laughing. The three closest to him say something. They are focused and grim, stepping over bodies as they close in. It is almost laughable that they move to surround me.
Without warning a pitiful, loud noise reverberates from beside them. I struggle, hard going, just to get turned, blue spots radiating across my vision.
They stab Biggs in the stomach. A very small stone knife.
The muscular ranger chuffs like a lion, mad with pain. The other Indians turn to the odd spectacle of his noises, laughing. Jagger hobbles toward them, a knife sticking from the back of his leg too. Our eyes meet, and I shake my head no, hell no, Jagger, because if they want us dead we’d already be there, and at first, the deep green gaze does not take me in with any sort of agreement. Then the crazy kid I like so very, very much, nods. Finally he halts.
The men around us say nothing. The Indians say nothing. With the slow patience of a sniper, or maybe a crocodile, I motion for everyone to just sit down and let them take what they want.
The back of my leg feels like it’s getting clawed open as I sit, like teeth twirling inside me. I have no air, nor words. Jagger convulses in pain, perplexed as they begin tying him with heavy vines to the tree he leans against, binding him with far more strength than he has in him.
A cold sensation slaps over my skin when I notice Farley. Bastard refuses to sit. He just stands, seeming to digest our situation. They shoot him between the eyes and the old fart falls over, a single leg straightening, twitching. Then goes still.
