Time slows to a crawl. The thumping of booted feet on soft forest floor. The men are loud, stepping on twigs, talking and laughing. As if the loss of half their forces here in the camp doesn’t matter in the least. Does Runner know whether there are more reserve teams, or additional ambush teams, or whatever? I’ll ask him later. I’ll shut up now. I mean, I’ll try to shut up my brain that whispers, They’ll find you. They’ll find you.
They pass my location and my bladder is about to burst. I fumble for my squeeze light, place my palm over it, and switch it on. Dim red glow illuminates the outlines of my legs, my gun’s stock, my ruck. I find one of my water canteens, drink the last sip, pull down my pants and awkwardly curl or squat or whatever this squeezed position can be called, and aim into the bottle. I manage without wetting my hands. So, canteen full, bladder half empty. I switch off the light, and listen. It’s quiet. I tilt the hatch a crack, and sneak my hand out to empty the piss in the dead foliage. I repeat the procedure and find that I can think and focus much better without having to clamp my legs together. Now, all I need to remember is to not confuse the two canteens. I open the MedKit, tear a piece of tape off the roll, and stick it to the pee canteen.
The earbud is silent except for the occasional deep breath. I take the time to eat and drink a little, flex my fingers and stretch my arms as best as I can in this constricted space. I slip more ammo into my pockets, then pack my stuff, ready for a hasty departure.
‘In position,’ says Runner. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes. I’m ready. Can I open the hatch now?’
‘Go ahead. The next guard is about fifty metres to your left. Ten o’clock, last time I saw him. One more thing: Erik is back.’
‘He came with the new men?’
‘Yeah,’ Runner answers.
Well, shit. No, actually, the opposite. It’s good he’s here, I remind myself. Better to see what your enemy is doing. But it’s more than weird that the enemy is my own father.
I push at the hatch, gently opening it a crack. I block it with one rock on either side, spread the netting over the branch before pushing my rifle through. I arrange a few more twigs, leaves, and bundles of grass to shield my muzzle report from view. The fog begins to crawl in, cloaking the bases of the trees, softening the noises, spreading a protective blanket over me. The flavours of the forest lose their intensity.
I aim my rifle at the back of the man nearest to me. He’ll be able to locate my muzzle report if I don’t take him out first.
‘Requesting permission to open fire,’ I whisper.
‘Permission granted.’
A boom! shuts off the silence. The man tips forward, falls on his knees, and collapses on his side. Before his face hits the ground, the camp erupts with noise.
I move my rifle and scan the area between me, the camp, and Runner’s location. The image amplification doesn’t work at all in the fog and even the infrared sensor runs into problems the denser the fog gets. I like it best when it’s as dense as pea soup. It means the others can’t see shit while running back and forth in my finder — green shadows, blurry and…ghost-like. I’m aiming at ghosts, while they don’t have anything to aim at. Fear me, fuckers.
Bullets zip past, men shout orders. The first shell hits more than a hundred metres left of me. I don’t allow myself to think of Erik. He’s the commander — he’ll be in the camp.
Aim and fire, that’s what I do, that’s what I am.
And then, just when my third target falls and I feel like nothing can kill me, a kid steps into view. I freeze. His eyes are huge, his shoulders tremble so hard, it looks as if his large ears quiver, too. He clutches a submachine gun, his waist unnaturally thick.
I blink.
Explosives.
He staggers forward, legs as thin as sticks, barely able to carry the boy and his payload.
The word payload tastes like the toxic pearl on my tongue.
He’s coming directly at me. He couldn’t have seen my muzzle flash! Could he?
He’s muttering something I can’t understand. Maybe a prayer. His eyes flick left to right, right to left. His knuckles are white. The gun is shaking with the boy.
‘Micka,’ sounds urgently from my earbud. ‘Does he see you?’
‘Don’t know,’ I whisper.
Do they know where I am? How can they send a boy directly to my location?
‘The kids are everywhere now. Look.’
I’m so cold I doubt one can get any colder. Small ghosts walk through the fog, drifting in and out of view. All of them living bombs, holding on to their guns as if a firmer grasp could save their lives. The boy’s gaze lowers to where the tip of my muzzle peeks out of the foliage. A war cry issues from the small mouth and the boy begins to run. Straight ahead. Straight at me.
‘This is so fucked up!’ The whining in my voice tips me into panic.
‘It is,’ Runner answers, and I know he has the boy in his crosshairs, the boy who now takes yet another hurried step towards me. A boy of maybe nine years. I can feel the pressure of Runner’s finger on the trigger before the round impacts. The boy tips aside, as if hit by a crumbling wall. I sink into my hole, my personal hole inside my dark foxhole, and I want to be dead.
‘Get your rifle inside, close the hatch!’ Runner barks. He must have heard my gulping for air and the sob I failed to muffle. I obey, because that’s what I do — obey Runner when I stop functioning. I curl up in a ball. I’ve done my killing for today. Fire when the fog comes, cease fire, change location, wait, fire, retreat. Fire the next day when the fog returns, cease fire, repeat. Without my permission, my mind calculates the number of days I’ll be spending like this until all of the BSA men are killed. Ten. At the least.
I don’t want to spend another minute here.
Faint pops seep through the blackness — Runner’s still firing. There’s also the sharp rattling of machine gun fire and the wheeee-woooomp of mortars. Dirt trickles off the walls and the hatch with every shell hitting the ground. They don’t even know where to aim.
I let the noise pass through me, shut my eyes and press my knuckles against my lids until lights pop in my vision and the pounding in my head grows unbearable. But the images won’t leave me: the slow tilting, the spray of blood and brain, the hole — this huge hole. I can’t do this. I can’t do this any longer. Sobs erupt from my chest and I stuff a fist into my mouth to silence the involuntary noises. I want to pour acid into my brain. I want to sleep. Let me sleep. Sleep…
‘Shut up, Micka. You’re getting yourself killed!’ hisses through my earbud.
I press my face against the soil, let the chill creep through my skin, try to not weep, try to be quiet. It doesn’t work. I hate this shit so much. I want to go home. Even if I don’t know what or where home is.
Faint rustling above my head kicks my instincts back into action. I pull my pistol and aim at the intruder before a milky sliver of faint morning light drops into my foxhole. A boot, then another, and the butt of his rifle. Runner folds his body into the small space and shuts the hatch. He pins me down with his weight, one hand in my hair, an arm wrapped around my neck, his face pressed to the top of my head.
‘Quiet, Micka. Calm down,’ he whispers. ‘Ssshhh. Panic kills you. Control keeps you alive.’
‘Get the fuck out,’ I growl. ‘Get the fuck off of me. Take your fucking hands off.’
He slides his coarse palm over my mouth and breathes into my ear, ‘Two men heard you. I shot them. If you keep this up, you’ll get us both killed. I prefer to stay alive, so please, shut up, Micka.’
I squeeze breath through the gaps between his fingers. Slowly, he moves his hand aside, but keeps me pinned to the ground. His breath is a staccato. I grab his hair and try to yank him off, but all he does is press closer. I try to push my knee between his legs, try to shove it into his crotch, but reach only his thigh.
Mute, I punch my rage into his ribcage until his shoulders tremble. That’s when all fight leaves me with a quiet sigh. Exhau
sted, my arms drop to my side. I turn my head away, let tears soak the soil. No need to hurt him, he’s hurting already.
I don’t know how long we’ve been lying here. Not that it matters much anyway. Time…who gives a fuck about time? My hand sneaks up to his shoulder. He’s still trembling. We both are. It’s like two wavelengths interfering with each other, but not quite certain whether they should dampen or amplify the destruction.
All air leaves my lungs. I rake my fingers through his hair, bury my face in the crook of his neck, and remind myself that he’s my friend, not my enemy. My hands relax. My breathing slows. I hold him now, and he holds me.
‘Thank you,’ he whispers.
I can’t bring myself to thank him for saving my life.
I’ve killed a child. He must have been twelve or thirteen, a determined boy without fear. His skin was of the same colour as Runner’s, his eyes were almonds — tilted upwards at the corners, the white a little bloodshot, shining black marbles as irises. There were no explosives on his stomach or anywhere on his body, no bruises showed on his skinny arms. He could have been any other boy carrying a toy gun, playing warrior. Until he shot another kid in the back, a lanky boy of the same age, whose knees were clacking against each other, wrists shaking with terror, shirt bulging with C4, legs refusing to walk out into the woods, into the fog. It began with a shove, a knock on the head with the butt of the submachine gun, and the boy stumbled forward, fell on his knees, and began to weep.
This was the moment I was ready to kill. Up until that moment, he hadn’t done anything but shove this other boy. But the spite in his expression, the set chin, the determination and harsh words he used on the other boy, tipped me into a colder version of myself. How dare you! I thought, and curled my index finger, letting it rest against the trigger. But something kept me frozen; maybe the belief that nothing would happen, that the game would end and both shake hands and leave for home. Mum is waiting. Breakfast is ready.
My mind refused to process the spray of bullets that came from the angry boy’s weapon and entered the scared boy’s head, exiting through his face, staining the earth. Two stray bullets passed through the C4 without setting it off. Good to know, I thought and blinked, and then, just like that, my index finger made the decision. One click and the boy fell, his submachine gun still spluttering. I don’t think I felt anything when I shot him; nothing but a vacuum, the odd sensation of two small bodies turning to dust before my very eyes, and the realisation that these two boys will stay with me until I die.
I lost count of how many men I killed.
The BSA changed tactics. They stopped killing one kid with every one of our attacks. They don’t dismember them with an axe or a knife. They need them all as living bombs and it works — the kids scare the fucking daylight out of me. How they drift in and out of the fog, eyes large and black, terror in their faces, ready to push the button and blow themselves up.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated the human race this much. I didn’t know there was so much rage in me, and I don’t think I’m large enough to contain it all. Sometimes it wants to come out and escape my control.
So much death here; so much terror. Runner and I are part of it. We are silent and invisible. We are everywhere and nowhere. We come with the fog, and grown men cry in terror when the white crawls through the forest and takes away their vision and then, their lives. The Fog! The Fog is coming!
They know we are two sharp shooters and something about Runner’s style has told them he’s The Executor. That’s what they call him when they mock him. He doesn’t tell me when he received his battle name and who gave it to him. ‘It’s you,’ he said last night. ‘You are The Fog.’
In three days’ time, our own troops will strike. The BSA’s ship is due in forty-eight hours and we’ll give them another twenty-four hours to settle down. Let them get comfortable. Let them think we are only two snipers against an army.
Runner and I won’t attach explosives to the ship; this task has now been appointed to a small group of swimmers.
We stay here and divert the BSA’s attention and energy with sniper attacks, while behind their backs, the tempest is brewing. Our forces will lead strikes by air, land, and sea. As soon as our ships arrive, the camp will be attacked from the air and the ground — fifty men will be dropped from aircraft. I’ve never seen parachutes and I’ll certainly never use one. Our swimmers will blow a hole in their ship, and then get out of the line of fire. The ship will be sunk by our armed vessels waiting farther out at sea. Once that’s done, our forces will move in and clear the whole area from the west coast all the way up to the east coast. We’ll be pushing in like a wave. Kat hasn’t told us how our forces are hiding from the satellites. I can’t imagine our ships are all painted ocean-blue.
Runner and I have the honour to cut off the BSA’s head. That means I have to kill my own father. Or Runner will. Whoever is first to get a clean shot. So far, we haven’t had any luck. Erik’s hiding from us and we don’t know if he has taken men with him and is planning an ambush or if he’s fleeing. There’s another thing that makes Runner nervous: Kat couldn’t tell him where the sixty men had come from so suddenly. He said they must have come from the west coast, but no vessel arrived and no aircraft seems to have delivered them. So there’s only one likely explanation: They’ve been here all the time. But where and what have they been doing? And most importantly: Are there more, and will they join forces with the men up here at the camp?
Runner and I will not split up to investigate. That would mean a weakening of our team, a cutting in half and doubling of danger. So we keep our ears pricked for movements at our backs.
Like now. I’m in a tree, scanning the perimeter of the camp and movements within. We are changing our positions often; despite the fog, it takes the BSA about five shots to make an educated guess where each of us could be hiding. So we squeeze off no more than three rounds, and then we move. I have taken two shots; one more and I’ll relocate to the foxhole east of here, then move to the next foxhole, shoot twice, then relocate to a tree, fire once, retreat. Avoiding a pattern helps us survive.
Shells fall, machine-gun fire hollers through the woods and below me drifts a small ghost. We all are moving in waves. When Runner and I are closer to the camp, the kids are dispatched closer, too. When we shoot from farther away, the kids are sent deeper into the forest. That’s how we evade them, most of the time.
I aim at a man four hundred and fifty metres from me. I hold my breath and curl my finger. Something doesn’t feel right. Heat rushes over my skin. Time slows. It’s as if I can see my bullet exit the muzzle. Fire approaches. Light and noise stab at my eyes, my ears, and go straight into my brain, numbing everything. My heart cracks wildly against my ribs, and I can hear the noise it makes, but can’t feel the touch of heart muscle against ribcage, the pressure of blood racing through arteries and veins. Ablaze! is the only word my mind forms. My mouth is open, but I don’t hear myself groan. Air blasts past me and I can barely hold on to my branch. The scrape of bark against palms wakes me from the shock. I blink and look down. Bushes have lost their twigs, branches are blown aside. There’s a torn shirt without owner, one sleeve hangs limply from a small tree.
I gaze through my scope towards the camp where the missile came from. More than twenty men move in my direction, creeping through the underbrush, armed to their teeth. They mean business.
With my pupils cranked wide open, my whole body coiled and ready to deliver violence and death, I map my surroundings for every single target. There’s movement four hundred metres ahead of me. Lots of movement — as if the forest floor has come alive, writhing, spitting fire. Despite all this, or maybe because of this, I feel myself grow calmer, more precise.
I’m well-tuned. I can aim. I can fire.
I lower my eye to my scope.
And then the jungle folds back with one enormous WOOOOOMP!
‘Can you see the launcher?’ crackles in my earbud. I scan the camp. Smoke. Holes in th
e ground. The launcher isn’t where it used to be.
Runner’s muzzle report sounds in my earbud. He’s squeezing off round after round.
WOOOOOMP!
I claw at the branch.
He hollers something I can’t understand, then my earbud screeches so loudly I have to rip it out. Half deaf, I aim at where the shot came from. I don’t see anything. No gun.
‘Micka! Micka!’ My earbud produces tiny squeaks. I put it back in.
‘What?’
‘Help me bring that thing down in the next thirty seconds, or move your ass from that tree.’
‘I’m on it,’ I grunt and wipe the sweat off my face and palms.
So you big bad guys are hiding with that big bad gun of yours. Seven hundred and sixty-two metres to the centre of the camp, another ten metres to the huts where the shots must have come from. I gaze through my scope. The night-eye shows me light-grey huts; no greenish thermal signature.
No time to correct my scope for the gentle east wind that begins to push at the fog. The crosshairs are off target, but the bullet won’t be. If I only knew which of the four black rectangles hides—
There!
The tip of a large muzzle peeks out of a window — a black maw, ready to spit death.
I pull the trigger and the muzzle disappears.
‘Fucker,’ I squeeze through my teeth.
I slip another round into my rifle and keep my eyes trained on the window. It rips open. The world falls deaf. A ball of fire materialises, zooming forth. No, it’s slow — crawling. As if I can touch it and comfortably lean away from it.
I’m lifted off the tree. My hands grasp for the branch, my weapon, anything. But we all go flying, tree, rifle, me.
My heart does funny things in my chest. A bird-like hoppity-hop. I soar. Or maybe I’m just kidding myself. Twigs and leaves slap at me. The ground hits me square in the chest. Warm stuff crawls out of my nose, but I don’t feel pain. That’s when my ears seem to be switched back on. No singing in my ears. I touch my head to make sure there’s no damage to my skull. Skull seems okay, but something’s stuck to my leg and my side. I shift and scan the length of my body, but it’s too dark to identify what’s what. Part of my ghillie is shaved off, I think. I try to stand, but fail. Fetch your rifle and find the nearest foxhole! my mind hollers. Or is it Runner?
Fog: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 15
