Wanted

by Jason Halstead

  “Jessie,” Tanya said softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She said it again, gently shaking her.

  Jessie’s eyes snapped open and she gasped as she stared at Tanya. She scrambled to get away, and Tanya recoiled a little bit from her instinctively. Then Jessie calmed down, or at least stopped moving. “Tanya?” she whispered.

  Tanya nodded. “I’m here,” she said. “It’s me, Jessie. Are you okay?”

  “You’re alive?” she asked, staring at her with her chin trembling.

  Tanya smiled. “Yeah, I’m okay. All of us, we’re okay.” As okay as we’re going to get, at least, she thought.

  Jessie’s arms wrapped around the gymnast before she could react. She pulled her close and made Jessie’s back twinge. Out of fear of re-injuring it, she did not resist, and quickly found herself smashed against Jessie’s chest. She carefully moved her head out of the older woman’s cleavage and let her hug her, confused as to just what the latest issue that was bothering her was.

  “Jessie?” Tanya asked, her voice muffled by the blankets and the woman holding her captive. “You’re kind of scaring me.”

  Jessie let go, a little. She loosened her grip and let one arm fall away but kept her other hand on Tanya’s upper arm. Jessie looked at her and smiled. “Sorry… I just…”

  “Bad dream?” Tanya asked her after it was obvious the older woman was having trouble finding proper words to use.

  She nodded, smiling faintly. “Yeah, something like that.”

  Tanya gently pulled Jessie’s hand off her arm then moved so she could sit on the edge of the cot. “Want to talk about it?” she asked her, reaching out and holding the disturbed woman’s hand in her own in a show of empathy. It caused a tremor in her stomach, what she was doing. It was a scene she’d been on the other end of a few times with her mom trying to help her.

  Jessie’s gaze shifted. She looked up at the metal rafters and the roof beyond them, but her eyes got blurry as she pondered Tanya’s question. Tanya wondered what could be so bad that even thinking about it forced her to run and hide. She knew her own troubles had only made her stronger, but she had to face them to get there. Sure, there were times when she thought there was no coming back. She could remember lying in the hospital bed, unable to feel anything except the tears running down her face. Those same tears that only caused more to follow them since she could not wipe them off.

  “It gets better,” Tanya said, giving her hand a squeeze. “I don’t know what’s bothering you, but it does get better.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said dully. “Time heals all wounds, right?”

  Tanya smiled sadly. “I don’t know about that, but I think we learn how to deal with them.”

  Jessie just stared at the roof, or maybe beyond it, from the unfocused look in her eyes. Tanya frowned a little, wondering how she could help the woman. Then she wondered why she was trying so hard, especially given Carl’s pearls of wisdom he had just shared.

  Tanya’s thoughts were disrupted when Jessie suddenly spoke. “I dropped out of high school at 17, but stopped going around 16. Got my GED, so I got something that says I’m not a total dumbass.”

  Tanya smiled and gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “You are kind of dumb,” she said with a smile, “but you’re not stupid.”

  “Yeah…thanks, I think,” Jessie said, smiling back in spite of herself. It helped her break the ice a little though, because she was able to continue a little easier.

  “I had to get out. Get away from…” Jessie hesitated, then went on, “I enlisted and shipped out… Never looked back. Ended up serving six years and it changed my life, mostly for the good till the end.”

  “What happened?” Tanya asked, interrupting the cathartic spell Jessie was putting herself under. Tanya couldn’t help it, she knew she should let her go on, but her curiosity was beginning to eat at her. Besides, as selfish as she’d thought Jessie to be, whining about her problems when Tanya and her brother clearly had just went through a lot more, at least this helped distract her from the grief that kept trying to overwhelm her.

  “I interviewed people. Soldiers, civilians, officers. I wanted to get into doing real stories, reporting news, you know? I kept getting stuck on recruiting videos though, it sucked. That was my last assignment, interviewing a lieutenant who had spent three months on border garrison duty between Iraq and Iran.” Jessie’s eyes shifted from the ceiling to Tanya. Tanya could see something in them, even with the lack of any proper light. She saw fear and pain, the kind that sticks deep in the soul and doesn’t come out.

  “I had this kid that followed me around, Khaled. He was an Iraqi and a good kid. He helped me out, anxious to spend time with Americans. I think he had a crush on me,” Jessie said with a faint smile as she thought of more pleasant memories. “He was there at the interview. I brought him with me because he helped out. He was cute, he made me feel good. I just didn’t think.”

  Jessie paused, collecting herself. Tanya waited, understanding this time that no amount of curiosity on her part would do any good. It was maddening, having to wait. Tanya was accustomed to being able to have her way simply because she refused to accept anything else. Some of it was her being spoiled and she knew it, but she also had achieved a lot of things just because she expected to achieve them. Even a crippling spinal injury hadn’t held her down, but dealing with another person with a troubled past? That was giving her an ulcer.

  “A suicide bomber came at us,” Jessie continued, rousing Tanya from her musings. “He… I saw him coming. I knew something was wrong. I knew he was wrong… but I just watched. I wanted the story. I wanted to be able to write about it, to tell what happened. I had no idea what it was like.”

  “What it was like?” Tanya half asked, half prompted when Jessie paused for a long time again.

  “I was non-combat. Most women were still,” she explained. “I’d never seen any action up close. So loud, so scary…”

  Tanya squeezed her hand again. She couldn’t think of what to do to help other than just to be there. Her mom had known her well enough to do just what to do.

  “Do you remember the plane crash at all?” Jessie asked her, changing the topic.

  Tanya shook her head. “Not really. We heard and felt a bang. Then there was this whistling noise. An engine was on fire, we could see it out the windows. The plane started to shake and nobody had any time to tell us what to do. I grabbed Dusty and my mom grabbed us. It was shaking bad then. Somebody was crying, I remember hearing it… and that’s it. Next thing I know you were there.”

  Jessie nodded. “Yeah, shaking, noise… that’s right. It’s scary – you don’t know what’s happening. You’re lucky though, you don’t remember it.”

  “I wish I did, I hate not knowing what happened.” Tanya smiled in the quarter light and offered an explanation, “Control freak.”

  Jessie shook her head, “I wish I couldn’t remember. I did everything I could to forget.”

  Tanya knew she meant drugs and alcohol. Probably a few other things as well, but what they were, Tanya was afraid to imagine. “So what happened to Khaled?” she asked, bringing Jessie back to her story.

  “Killed,” Jessie said. Then she paused. “Lieutenant Thelen too. He threw himself on me to protect me. He died on top of me. Khaled, Brian – that was the specialist who was my cameraman, and another eight or nine people. All dead, blown up and mangled.”

  Tanya squeezed her hand, bringing her out of her fugue. “I don’t see how that’s your fault?”

  Jessie shrugged. “That’s what the army doctors told me too. Survivor syndrome, they called it. I feel guilty because everyone else died and I lived, they say.”

  “I’ve heard of that before,” Tanya said, trying to add some credence to it.

  “Maybe it’s true,” Jessie said, looking away at the wall. She turned back and shrugged again. “I live through it again in my dreams. Doesn’t matter how much I drink or smoke or snort. Doesn’t matter how much sex I have, or who i
t’s with, or how it happens. The dreams always come.”

  “Maybe there’s another way,” Tanya suggested, unable to fathom letting go of herself so much. The thought of intentionally losing control the way Jessie did sent shivers down her arms.

  “Maybe,” Jessie said, looking back at her.

  Tanya watched her, seeing a look on her face that she couldn’t figure out. Jessie looked like she wanted to say something, to tell her more. She couldn’t bring herself to do it though, and Tanya wondered how she could help her. “What is it?” she asked her, at a loss for how to figure it out.

  “What?” Jessie asked her.

  “There’s more, I just don’t know what.”

  Jessie nodded, looking away then looking back at her. She sighed, reaching a decision within herself. “Don’t fuck with me, okay?”

  Tanya nodded, “I promise.”

  “This time after the bomb went off I saw Dusty and you – with the plane behind you. You told me… you told me I killed you. You asked me why I didn’t save you.”

  Jessie stared at Tanya, daring her to react. She ignored the trembling in her chin and waited for the wide eyed teenager to respond.

  “Jessie, you saved us,” she told her. Her voice was soft and quiet, but laced with the steel of seriousness. “Maybe for the wrong reasons, but you saved us. I have to think that somewhere in there, as screwed up as you might have been, you were doing it for the right reasons too.”

  Moisture gathered in the actress’ eyes again. She blinked it away and looked off to the side to regain control of herself. She looked back and sat up on the cot, surprising Tanya a little. “Don’t talk,” the brunette said to the young blonde. She wrapped her arms around her and held her for a long moment, her body quivering a little every now and then from the emotions she was battling.

  Tanya returned the hug, feeling confused and awkward, but also feeling happy and proud of herself. She had helped, and it made her feel good. Before, she’d always succeeded at her own internal goals. This time she’d made a difference for somebody else.

  “Don’t freak out, okay?” Jessie whispered in her ear.

  Tanya nodded, then felt her eyes widen in surprise when Jessie started to pull away from her and then suddenly kissed her. It wasn’t a thank you peck on the cheek, it was an honest-to-god full blown real kiss on the lips! Tanya’s own lips parted out of surprise, she sucked in air through her nose and very nearly did what Jessie had asked her not to: freak out.

  Jessie broke the kiss quickly, without pushing her at all. She smiled as Tanya’s fingers went to her lips, touching them in surprise. The gymnast stared at her, confused and feeling out of her mind. “Don’t worry, you’re not gay, I just had to kiss you.”

  Tanya nodded, dropping her hand to her lap. “I’ve…um… I’ve never done that before.”

  “Never kissed a girl?” Jessie asked with a smile.

  “No – Yes! I mean… I’ve never kissed a girl before,” she stammered. “Or anyone, not really.”

  “Oh!” Jessie said, surprised. “You’re a little scrawny, but why not? Pretty girl, talented. Smarter than anyone else I know. What’s stopping you?”

  “Scrawny?” Tanya said, frowning. “You wait till I’m better – I’ll show you scrawny!”

  Jessie laughed. “Atta-girl.”

  Realizing she was being played with, Tanya could not help but grinning back.

  Chapter 9

  Carl rose up, having heard enough, and silently exited his house before Tanya emerged from the closet turned bedroom. Sleep, he knew, would be hard coming for him. He moved across the dark landscape smoothly, trusting his years of experience to warn him of any threats. It served him well, for he found nothing amiss by the time he reached one of his many small caches of stores.

  Moving a large rock aside, he cleared away the dirt beneath and below it to allow access to the flimsy piece of sheet metal that covered a hole he had dug. He peered into it cautiously, then gingerly pulled out the guns and other items of interest he had taken from the men he had recently killed. With every move, he was alert for any sign of a scorpion or other stinging or biting pest that might have found a way into the hole. When no threat showed itself, he reburied the cache then made the loaded down trek back to his house.

  The sky was lightening in the east when he paused outside the door of his house. He could faintly hear noise inside. Movement and talking-his guests were already up. He frowned and shrugged his shoulders, reseating one of the rifles that hung from a strap. He reached for the handle and paused again, wondering if he knew what he was doing. Then, with a growl at himself, he pushed open the door and walked in.

  Dustin, Jessie, and Tanya looked over at him, surprised. Their looks only magnified when they saw the ordnance he was carrying. He ignored their questioning faces and proceeded to the table instead, dumping the items on it none-too-gently. That finished, he sat down and pulled the twelve gauge to him, then began to quickly and efficiently strip it down.

  “More trespassers?” Jessie asked softly, coming over to stand next to him.

  Carl glanced at her and noted she was still wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of his pants. He shook his head slightly, just to remind himself not to bother, then went back to work.

  “Wake up on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence?” Jessie asked him, trying to not be too miffed at his silence.

  “Something,” he grunted, then put the finished shotgun aside and started in on the FX-05 Fire Serpent that the Maelstrom squad leader had been carrying.

  “Fine… you guys want breakfast?” Jessie said, turning her back on him and bouncing toward the kitchen.

  Carl caught himself as he turned to watch her go. She really was bouncing. What fucking right did she have to be in such a good mood? He scowled and went back to work, anxious to put it behind him and get back to something he could call normal.

  The cleanup job was done soon enough. He put the last rifle in a pile, a tried and true Heckler & Koch G3A3, and turned to face his houseguests as they munched on some concoction Jessie had made with corn meal, coyote meat, and some canned peas. He would be glad when they were gone, his food stores in the house were starting to run low.

  Watching them he found himself hesitating again though. They looked at peace. Eating and talking to one another, it was almost as if things were normal. Carl watched, knowing he was about to throw a major wrench into things, and found himself remembering the conversation he had overheard the night before. He nodded to himself, his resolution restored.

  “Time to go,” he said, standing up and interrupting their peaceful breakfast.

  “Huh?”

  “What?”

  “Go where?” Tanya asked.

  “Beats me. Not here,” he said again. “They ain’t ready yet, but I’ve had enough of you,” Carl said, pointing at her.

  Jessie’s eyes widened and the color drained from it. She snapped her mouth shut and glared at him. “Just like that?”

  “Yeah, just like that,” he said, standing his ground. “I don’t trust you and you know too much already. There’s bad news following these kids; they don’t need you making it more complicated.”

  Her chin trembling a little her eyes narrowed, emotions running through her rapidly and beyond her ability to control. “Great, okay, fine,” she snapped. “What about me? Huh? What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

  Carl shrugged. He wished he’d never said anything to her, then wished he’d have just shot her and saved himself the headache. “Take your pick,” he said, nodding at the table. “All the water you can carry too.”

  At a loss for words, Jessie turned to look at Dusty and Tanya. Tears brimmed in her eyes, the genuine sort that called out to them. She turned back to Carl and stared at him, pleading with him silently. “I’m… I… Carl, please!”

  “Save it,” Carl interrupted. “Don’t make this harder on anyone than it needs to be – you know you got nothing that can change my mind.”

  Jessie
stared at him, angry and lost at the same time. A tear ran down her cheek but she ignored it. Finally she looked at Tanya and Dustin and offered a weak smile. “Sorry guys,” she whispered.

  Dustin hopped up, grimacing a little but moving better than he could be expected to. “I’m going too,” he said, his chin stuck out defiantly.

  “Dustin!” Tanya hissed, staring at him.

  “Sure, maybe she’s got problems. Maybe she had her own reasons… but damn it Sis, I like her!” he told her. “She saved our butts and without her we’d be dead or worse now.”

  “Carl saved our butts too,” she pointed out to him, standing up as well.

  “Look, Dusty… don’t do this,” Jessie said, surprising everyone, including herself. “It’s not safe out there. You stay here and look after your sister. I’m sure Carl will get you back home safe and sound.”

  “What about you?” Dustin asked.

  “I’ll get by. I’m a survivor – I’ll find a way.”

  “This is fucking stupid,” Dustin swore.

  Tanya took a step closer to him and smacked him, stunning everybody by the sudden action. “Watch your mouth! Mom may be gone, but she wouldn’t want you talking like that.”

  Dustin stared at her, his cheeks flaring with embarrassment. Words failed him.

  Jessie turned to look at Carl. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “No.”

  “Look, I know I was a bitch… I screwed up, okay, I know it and I’m not making up any excuses for it-“

  “Good,” he said. “Then leave.”

  “Carl, come on. Look at these two,” Jessie implored him. “Maybe I ain’t much, but what else have they got? You? You’re Mr. Fucking Stone Wall. What good are you to them other than somebody that can keep them from getting killed?”

  “Better than you,” he growled at her. “And you still talk too much. Grab your shit and get the fuck out.”