It was like what we had discovered in the cellar of that warehouse in Pakistan. Despite the screwed-up things we had already seen during that tour, Sierra and I had had no clue what to expect, and we certainly hadn’t been ready for the truth. After the smoke had settled, we’d seen the hearts of thirty-six people had been removed from their chests and delicately placed in suspension within medical tubes. Machines were gently pumping life into the hearts, keeping them beating at a stable rate. As I had walked down that gauntlet, I was able to hear the rhythmic beats of the hearts like the steady pounding of a base drum. That was when I’d noticed a note on the wall across the room. Approaching with some hesitation, I’d read it.
“Invader scum. These are the hearts from your brainwashed foot soldiers. There are thirty-six of them—the daily average of cluster bombs you dropped on us for your murderous war. This is only a fraction of the lives taken compared to how many we have lost and will continue to lose. As you continue to break our hearts, we will continue to take yours.”
I had instantly wanted to mow down as many of the enemy as I could find. I had been seething with ire, to the point that I was shaking. What the hell did you do after reading a note like that? What the hell were you supposed to do when you find a place like that? How was I supposed to deal with it? None of my training had prepared me for anything remotely close to that. The enemy had been trying to get to us, and it had been working.
Then nausea had overcome me as it became clear where we were. So deep in morbid thought, I hadn’t notice that Sierra had come up next to me and just finished reading the note.
She had connected the dots almost instantly. “The morgue.”
“What?”
“The thirty-six bodies that got sent home for burial. The Y-incisions.” Sierra grimaced and walked back through the room.
In that moment, something had dawned on me. As much as I hated the enemy, and as much as they said they’d wanted us to leave, they hadn’t been stupid. They had known that by killing our men and women and taking their hearts, soldiers would snap, the war would intensify, and the whole climate of the country would sink into even more bitter turmoil. We would drop more bombs, and they would take more hearts. So, it had become clear to me at that moment that they hadn’t been looking to stop the war but had a stake in making it worse. In fact, the people most affected, the nonaffiliated locals, had been caught between the enemy and us, and they hadn’t cared whose bullet killed their loved ones. They’d hated us all. Then I’d remembered Sarah telling me about the protesters back home who had been asking for peace. As livid as I was, I had known what had to be done.
“Corporal, we’re shutting this down, and we’re telling HQ that we didn’t find any arms at this location.”
Sierra had been rightfully skeptical. “Come again, Sergeant?”
“We’re shutting it down. We’re not letting the enemy keep our wounds open any longer. They’re not going to win this time.”
“Uh, sir, yes, sir.”
I had gone right up to the generator, pressed two buttons, and pulled out a cable. The hum of the room began to die down and the ventilators slowly came to a halt. In an instant, the silence became deafening and the previously fluttering hearts hunched down, finally able to rest.
“Sir, what do we do with them now?”
“Can you line the door with C4 on our way out? So the next person to set foot in here will trip it?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand.”
“If we say this place should be taken off the munitions map, we’ll never come back. But the enemy might.”
Our conversation had been interrupted by Bravo Company. “Coyote Royal, no communication in fifteen minutes. Do you copy, over?”
“Bravo Company, this is Coyote Royal, over.”
“Team Trinity has landed successfully. I repeat, Trinity has landed. Do you copy?”
“Copy that, Bravo Company. What are our orders now? Over.”
“Is your flight close to landing? Over.”
Sierra had looked at me with one eyebrow up.
“That’s a negative, Bravo Company. The destination is not in sight. I repeat, the destination is not in sight. Over.”
“Then let’s all rendezvous with team Trinity to celebrate their successful trip. Over and out.”
Sierra and I completed the trap and got our asses out of the city and back to base. That night, I drank as much hooch as I could get my hands on. Being severely dehydrated in a desert climate hadn’t boded well for PT the morning after, and I’d thrown up more that morning than any other time in my life. Maybe combined.
Going to the med bay for fluids, the nurse had joked with me. “Did you get stung by one of those deadly reds?”
Oddly enough, the memory of that time felt more reminiscent than traumatic. Maybe the years after my service had finally allowed me to get over everything that happened. Maybe it allowed me to accept the decisions I made.
Kids would do that to you. Lucy had been my life when I’d gotten home. Then Joey had been my life too. I’d made a promise to myself when debriefing from my last tour that I wouldn’t let my baggage hold back Sarah and our family. I had to be there for them. I had to show them love. All of the things I’d never gotten as a kid, I wanted to give them. It was the least I could do, considering the sacrifices Sarah had made while I was deployed.
But I’d realized early on that I couldn’t try to be the dad that I’d always wanted. No. That would have set the kids and me up for failure. If that wasn’t what they’d needed or even wanted, they would resent me, and I would reset them. They hadn’t been me, and they’d needed a father who would be attentive to their needs. There weren’t any shortcuts or easy routes to parenting. You had to know when to talk to your kids. More importantly, you had to know when to shut the hell up and listen. While kids couldn’t know as much as adults, they sure were perceptive, and it was with all that information that you had to figure out how to be the best parent you could be.
That was what had made everything so much worse. I had been a shitty dad. When I was around, I had been preoccupied with the next job coming up. When I hadn’t been around, I had been breaking the law doing those jobs. And because of me, they were gone. They hadn’t even gotten a fighting chance because of the screw-up-of-a-father I turned out to be. So, not only was I not the parent that they’d needed or even wanted, but I had been worse. As bad as I’d had it as a kid, at least I was given opportunities. I had taken that away from them when I’d agreed to work for the Padre, and it hurt me deep down in my soul. It was the kind of pain that really made one feel isolated. I’d felt as lonely as each one of those thirty-six hearts that we had found that night. Those hearts had no hope left, and neither did I. Just like them, it was finally time that I put myself to rest.
Every night at 9:55 PM, the intercom rang with commands to get into our beds for lockdown and roll call. Once in our beds, straps locked us in, and the automated outer doors to the holding cells opened up. Roll call was completed by guards who walked past each cell and scanned the inmates before the doors eventually closed and we were unlocked from our beds. The building was really old, so they must have added the automation after the doors were installed. Early on, I’d noticed a box taking up half the ceiling that had to house the chain mechanism for opening and closing the door to my cell. The room engineers hadn’t been completely dumb, so you couldn’t reach it with your hands or really tamper with it in any meaningful way. Additionally, the doors wouldn’t open if you weren’t locked in your bed, and you wouldn’t be unlocked from your bed until the door closed. But there was an opening on top of the box that I thought would make my plot possible.
For several weeks, I stole sheets from the laundry room. Each night, I’d put another one on my bed until they reached thirty feet in length when all tied together. Then I paid a guy my last pack of menthols to get me a piece of metal that was h
ook shaped. It didn’t have to be fancy, but I definitely needed it to be small and able to grab onto the chain of my door. With that, I finally had all the pieces I needed.
During the day, I ran the sheet around my bed, along the wall, over the door, and left the hook hanging just out of sight until the last minute prior to lockdown/roll call. I had to get the hook just right so that the chain grabbed it as the door was closing, not opening; otherwise, the roll call guard would notice. There wouldn’t be much room for error, but I didn’t have anything else to lose, so it was worth a shot.
With the little time I had left, I knew I needed to write a letter to the person I’d hurt the most even though I was dreading it. My palms were sweating as I grabbed the pen and paper, but I was steady as I wrote. Finishing the letter brought a little bit of peace to me, though short-lived. Moments after I set down the pen, sirens blared over the intercom and the lights flickered in the hallways. With my senses instantly flooded, it took all my willpower to focus on the task at hand. My time had come.
Darting to the far corner of the room, I stood up on the toilet and grabbed the hook. Holding it tightly in one hand, I gathered the slack of the sheets in my other hand. In one motion, I heaved the hook toward the slot in the box.
Clank!
“Dammit!” I missed.
I reeled the sheet back in and gripped the hook again as I heard the guard doors opening down the hall. The savage growling of the K9 units added to the intensity of the moment as I gave the hook another chuck. It rattled through, and I was certain I had failed again. But in trying to pull back the sheet, it was stuck. It was done! I hit it exactly the way I had planned.
I immediately dove into bed, fitted the tight sheets around my lower neck, and then, pulled the covers up to my chin to hide the evidence. Everything was in place, and if it was going to happen, it would be in just a few moments.
The cell door began to open with a repeated clank, clank, clank. I could feel the hooks moving in unison with the chain, and as I had planned, it stayed perfectly in place. Once the door was fully open, two guards appeared in front and scanned my open cell. One of the guards aimed his flashlight right into my eyes, but I didn’t flinch at all as I stared directly at the ceiling. He paused for what seemed like an entire minute as his rabid dog lost its mind in my direction, and I was sure they were onto me. I began to mentally prepare for another beating and more time in solitary.
“Dammit, George, get over here! Another idiot is frothing at the mouth. We need to cut out the damn light show because these bastards are sensitive!”
Thank God for Bob’s seizures.
A comforting feeling washed over me in those final moments. No longer did I need to worry about everything under the sun. No more did I have to feel sad about never becoming a firefighter. I no longer had to carry the burden of the thirty-six hearts. I didn’t have to be in pieces over losing my family. I didn’t have to feel like a failure as a father anymore. I was going to do something good as my final act. Something good for me. Something good for the world.
The intercom screamed that lockdown/roll call was over, and the lights and sirens died down. I had roughly thirty seconds until the end, and just like when I was lying face down on the concrete, Sarah and the kids flashed into my mind. They were so precious. They deserved so much better than a person like me in their lives. Maybe, in another life, I would return to be a better person. Ah, what the hell did I know?
The mechanism for the door kicked on, and I could see the bottom of the hook sitting on top of the box. The door began to close, and I panicked when the chain failed to immediately grab the hook, but a second later, I could feel the tension around my neck getting stronger and stronger. Tighter and tighter until the life was being squeezed out of me through my neck. As the door shut completely, the lack of air finally got to me as I half-heartedly tried to fight against it. It wasn’t long before numbness overtook my body, and flashes from my past appeared, becoming my very last thoughts.
“I love you, Sarah. I love you, Lucy. I love you, Joey.”
Ugh!
“No! I can’t breathe!”
Chapter 16:
Doubt Truth to be a Liar
“No! I can’t breathe!”
Jumping out of bed, I was drenched in sweat and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I was trying desperately to catch my breath and remember what the hell had happened in the nightmare I’d just come out of. Scrambling to grab my netphone, I opened the journal and began frantically typing.
I was locked away in a jail. A hook and a chain. I couldn’t breathe but why?
At that point, I could basically feel the details leaving me. Like a tiny puddle when the sun comes out, all of the specifics quickly evaporated from my mind. It was frustrating as hell because I felt like something very important had happened. In an attempt to keep it together, I thought about all of the dreams I had been having. They were all very similar in that I would wake up to fear and anxiety followed by the worst feelings: sadness, depression, despair, hopelessness.
But something different was brewing this morning as the terror from dreaming of suffocation subsided. For the first time since the migration, I felt a sense of total relief. Deep down in my core, I felt like everything had been resolved, and while it didn’t make any sense to me, it still felt like major progress.
My thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of my netphone, and I was thankful it was Helen.
“Morning!”
“Oh my God, Ryan! Are you okay?” Her voice was trembling.
The euphoria from my breakthrough muted my reply. “I’m actually doing fine. I’m really sorry that I left you the way I did last night.”
“You had me so damn worried going home. Not cool!”
“Sorry! I had a strange episode during the speech. I felt like I had to get out of there. I just went home and passed out in my bed.”
“So, you’re not completely freaking out anymore?”
“No, I actually think what happened might have been a good thing. I’ll be talking with my family counselor later today, and I’ll bounce it off of him. But in general, I think I’m good.”
“Well, damn. I’m glad to hear that, Ryan. Just keep me posted and let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks! I definitely will.”
“Now that I know you didn’t jump off a bridge, I can start my day. We’re still on for drinks Friday night, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
“Great. I’ll see you then!”
“Bye!”
I felt bad for worrying her, but it felt good to know she cared. She really helped round out my support system, and to that end, I was glad to be seeing Dr. Dean later that day. He was familiar. For years, he had known my family, and had been very good at helping me get through issues. Most importantly, he was removed from the mind migration process, so I was thinking that kind of outside perspective would be helpful.
Jumping into the shower, my morning routine was complete in the blink of an eye; I was fully dressed. Interestingly, I was excited that mundane activities were finally becoming mundane and I could focus on more important things with my new abilities. Heading downstairs, I pulled up the news hologram on my phone while I ate a large bowl of oat bran, and while shoveling the first big spoonful into my mouth, some very important news appeared.
NO LONGER A COLD WAR: FPR INVADES HAWAII, DECLARES WAR ON OUR NATION.
After twenty years of jockeying for position in parts of the Middle East and Asia, tensions came to a head today in the South Pacific. The Free People’s Republic mechanical forces used advanced stealth technology to land on the west beach of Kauai just after 4:30 AM local time. They began firing on Fort Kamehameha shortly after, resulting in twenty military casualties, two civilian casualties, and significant property damage before the invading forces could be disabled. President Joy R
ogers is meeting with congressional leaders and foreign allies to prepare for the impending war.
War was a normal part of life for me. I was just two years old when our military was forced to pull out of the Great India/Pakistan War, or GIP with a soft g as it was referred to by the antiwar folks. They’d say, “We got gipped (gypped) by the war,” completely unaware of how offensive the phrase actually was to many other groups, though they were right in that the war was unjust. Pakistan had been harboring extremists who’d sought to destabilize India in hopes of spreading to that country. Not only had our involvement in the conflict failed to reduce the number of those extremists, but some also argued that we’d only increased the group’s numbers due to locals uniting against a common, foreign enemy. International pressure had made it impossible to maintain a presence in the area, and troops as well as the then newly deployed mechanized marines were quickly brought home. Surprisingly, the conflict had still turned out favorably for India and Pakistan. Within a couple of years, the two governments were able to isolate the extremists and nullify their influence.
Only a few years later conflicts began with the former nation of China where the Free People’s Republic (FPR) originated. For years, that country had been in a state of chaos as the majority of the population rebelled against China’s government and military. Again, we’d sent in forces to assist in maintaining global order, but it wasn’t long before the surrounding countries, including parts of India and Pakistan, began to help the rebels. It had taken less than a decade for the loosely affiliated countries to combine into a super nation.
Between Two Minds: Awakening Page 18
