23h35 24/12/14

by Benway

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9

They said it would all be over by Christmas. That was ten years ago.

I shouldn't be here. I'm in no shape for this. I should be back at the canteen getting shitfaced. That's all I'm good for, now.

The first Christmas after the shit came down, we were building these fucking trenches. There were still trees in this park. We had GPS locators. We had front end loaders and the diesel to fuel them. We had guns and shells and rockets. We had bullets. We had kids stupid enough to get into these trenches and to fight for them. Kids like me.

No-one comes here anymore. We don't send anyone out here except the psychos, to get themselves killed. Our snipers and their snipers can get a line of sight down almost any of these trenches from the towers at the edge of the park. It's a boundary between us and the Cadets and the Posse. It's a place to go hunting for humans. If the moon wasn't hidden by a dense fog, I'd be dead, and so would the asshole in front of me.

He says he's a merc. Makes sense, he has no tats, no dreadlocks, no colours. I don't know what the fuck he's doing out here. We fell over each other in the dark, but we didn't shoot each other. That was lucky for me, because my pistol doesn't have any bullets in it. He doesn't know that, and that's why I haven't been raped. Maybe that's too pessimistic, maybe it isn't. At least we're heading for the same place.

He's up ahead. He's trying to pretend he's not lost. After all, he's a guy. Not that either of us have any maps. The fog hides the moon, which is almost full. He's taken a few peeks over the top, but he didn't describe anything I could recognize. I'd kill for a compass. So would he. Maybe for less.

He says his name's Archer, but I get the feeling that's more what he does that who he is. That's not a happy thought, because Ralph the Hunter uses a bow. He also walks through bunker walls, flies through the air, and can slit your throat by looking at you, if you ask the rank and file. Intel says that he's not a meta, but none of the troops believes that. I've lost two men to that prick. He never takes prisoners. I'm not sure I would, if I caught him. I used to take prisoners. Lots of assholes thought that was weird. I'm not Tim, but I'm not like the rest either. I'm supposed to be one of the good guys.

Archer said he was heading for Ranger lines, but then he'd had a good look at my tat, so that's what I would've expected him to say. We Rangers survived because we've got discipline and because we don't fuck with mercs. He says his company didn't have any women. From how he's looking at me, I can believe that.

Tim asked me about the tats once, in one of his letters from Toronto. I told him it made sure that the Posse didn't mistake us white Rangers for Cadets. I left it for him to figure out that the tat meant that if the Posse got you, there was a chance for an open casket funeral. The black Rangers dye their brows white, since tattoos don't always show up, so they don't get mistaken for Posse troopers by the Cadets. I hate this shit.

Archer's stopped to take a peek again. Almost ran into him. He dives down, then looks again. He's got guts, if not brains.

"See anything?" I ask.

"Stone wall," he says. "Bunch of columns, big fucking building off behind it."

That's all I can get out of him. It could be one of four places. Two of them are really bad, and if we keep going this way, we'll hit Cadet lines. One isn't so bad, but will take us around the back side of the lake and we might not reach Ranger lines before Dawn. The fourth one is the best, but it will lead us straight into Cadet territory if we're wrong. If we backtrack and it is the fourth one, we'll end up in Posse territory. Shit.

The fog lifts for a moment, and both of us hit the deck and look up. No red lines, no-one watching for us. We'd never see the IR from a nightsight, but the fog should fuck that up enough to give us a chance. There's a junction up ahead. I turn on my redlight and I shine it on my hand. I signal that we should turn right. He stares back at me without replying, then rises to a crouch and starts down the right fork. I turn the redlight off. They say that you can't see red light at a distance, but I've never believed it.

This is all just one big fuck-up from start to finish. I know exactly where my ammo and my rifle and my celphone and my compass and my maps are, or what's left of them. After I left Tim at the drop and flashed the all-clear, we were driving back along what used to be the West Drive, when something hit us. Might have been a mine, a mortar, or a missile. Didn't see anything, just flew. Wasn't wearing the webbing, since that was part of the hand-over deal. I was just about to put it on. I didn't get hurt, but only me and Ortega were thrown clear. The others burned. We both made a break for it. I fell into a trench. Sniper got her. Thought I saw a muzzle flash from a hill 50 yards away. She was pinned down. We tried to take the fucker out, but he kept playing with her until she was screaming to make it stop. I could see that she wasn't going to make it, so I used my last bullet on her. Maria Consuela Ortega, age 28. It wasn't the first time I've done that. Every time, I hope it's the last.

Thinking about Tim again. Shit. This keeps up, I'll end up wherever Wayne ended up. Maybe he's buried out here. We found his fancy car burned out in our sector, but no remains. We blamed it on the Posse, but it could have been some of us. This is no good. Have to keep my mind on where we're going. I recognize a bunker set in the wall of the trench. I think we've been going around in a circle. Not good. If we're out here at sunrise, we're dead meat if we can't find somewhere to hide. If that's not bad enough, I start to get the feeling. The one when you know you're in danger, that someone's watching. It kept me alive before, when I put on tights and danced across the rooftops with Tim. I've got to warn Archer. I hiss. He turns. I flash the redlight twice, quickly. No response. I turn the redlight on his face. He gives me a what-the-fuck look. Ahead, I point. He shakes his head. I don't want to hang back. He's nervous enough to shoot me if he thinks I'm sneaking up behind him. He starts forward again. I hiss.

"What?" he whispers.

Then he trips over something and falls flat on his face. Straight ahead, three spots a little brighter than the blackness.

"Don't shoot," says a woman's voice, softly.

"Fire!" Archer screams. "FireFireFire!"

I've got my pistol pointed at her. I switch on my redlight. Pure craziness. My instincts say she hasn't got a rifle, and if it's a trick, I'm dead anyways. She hasn't got a rifle.

"She's trying to surrender," I say.

She stares at me, not saying anything. This is spooky shit. I can't read her face at all.

"Are you alone?" I say.

She keeps staring at me. I aim the pistol at her gut, and shine the redlight on it so she can see.

"I'm all by myself," she says. "All alone."

I don't recognize her, but that doesn't mean anything. I can't see any insignia, so she's either a merc or a Cadet who's thrown her insignia away.

"You know her?" I ask Archer, keeping the redlight on her face.

"Fuck no," he says. "Shit."

"What," I say.

"Cadet," he says. "You can see where there's duct tape on her left sleeve."

"Pick up your rifle and cover her while I search her," I say.

It's not something I want to do, but I can't trust Archer to keep his mind on the job. I've seen the way he's been watching me over his shoulder while we've been wandering around out here.

"Turn around, up against the wall," I say.

She obeys.

"Feet further apart," I say.

She moves them but she's shaking so badly she drops to her knees. Archer doesn't shoot. He should have. She doesn't move any more.

I crouch down and get to it. I take off her helmet. She's got the haircut I used to have. Keeps you from getting lice and other vermin up there. I cried when they cut it all off the first time, thought it made me look ugly. It's grown back, but no-one looks at me now unless they have to.

Shit. I shake my head. I can't imagine what they're thinking, about why I froze up like that. It's why I'm driving a desk now instead of leading a skirmisher company. She looks my age, which might make her a squad leader, too. I undo her webbing and throw it to the rear. I hear Archer picking it up behind me. I pat her down. No concealed weapons that I can find, nothing that feels like it might be a map or a compass or a GPS. She's in fighting shape, like I used to be.

"Anything?" I ask him.

"Food rations," he says. "They're kind of fucked up. No compass. Nothing we could use."

I get a garbage tie out of my pants. No ammo, but I've still got four of these things from my last time on fucking drunk patrol a year ago. Typical. We're not suppose to call them garbage ties, but they look like the things we used to tie up the trash with. Because she's a Cadet, I pull the things tight as I can. I'm not supposed to do that either. She hardly moves at all.

"Hey," says Archer, beckoning me aside.

"What?" I say.

He points to the bunker in the side of the trench.

"Stand guard out here," he says, looking back at the prisoner.

"No," I say. "No fucking way."

"Spoils of war," he says.

There's an undertone there that I can't ignore. Before I led my own squad, I had to watch a lot of fucking awful things happen without saying anything. If I'd spoken, I knew that I wouldn't have come back alive. In the front lines among the men, they did what they wanted. They mightn't in front of a squad leader, and they wouldn't in front of the Spoiler, back when that meant something. I'd used that to save maybe a dozen surrendering prisoners. I had a kid, once, put up for adoption. I was told he was adopted by a prof at the university. One of these days, I could be saving him. Maybe I'd just do it anyways. I'm not Tim.

"We don't have time," I say. "Besides, we're negotiating with them. Fucking a potential hostage won't go down well with our people."

He grunts.

"It'll look better for you," I say.

"Shit," he says, weakly.

"Keep an eye on her," I say.

I pick up her webbing and start going through it. Her ID pouch is empty, which is a bad sign. She might have a reason that she doesn't want us to know who she is. She might be Ralph. I shine the redlight on her. No necklace of ears. Her water bottle is empty. I open her ration pouch and I freeze.

In the bottom, something glints, something wrapped in foil. I pick it out with shaking hands. I drop my redlight. It's chocolate. There's a corner where it was chewed. I run my fingers along it. The contour is too regular to be the work of a human jaw. There's also something that feels like little bits of raw hamburger along the edge. I hold it up to my nose. It smells like dark chocolate and strawberries and blood and I'm back in this morning again.

Have some chocolate, said Tim.

I didn't want to, even though I hadn't seen chocolate in years. It was Swiss. We'd had a petition signed by 30,000 Swiss citizens from Solothurn delivered to us the week before, pledging solidarity with our cause. Since the missiles raining down on our positions for the last month had been made in Zurich, our commander had cut the thing up and put it in the latrines.

Tim smiled when I told him about that.

My offer's still open, he said.

I could join him and the other Blue Helmets in trying to arrange truces. He'd speak up for me, get me past the UN tribunals. I'd have to leave Gotham, and that was the hard part. They wouldn't let me work around here.

Who would take me? I asked.

They took me, he said.

You founded the Cadets, I said, regretting it immediately.

I know, he said. I've got the scars to show for it.

I didn't want to think about that.

You're fucking insane to go back there, I said. The people we sent to talk with the Cadets often came back to our lines with the shit kicked out of them, when they came back at all.

There's a lot of conflict back there, he said. My contacts tell me that I might be able to negotiate a truce. Get your water and gas flowing again.

Or get yourself shot, I said.

How many of your people will make in through the winter without a truce? he asked.

I knew the answer to that. We've started calling our territory Sarajevo. We're not supposed to, but even the commander does it.

Even worse, he wasn't going alone. He needed a driver, and there was no way that we could give him one. Instead, one of the Red Cross volunteers, a Japanese guy called Godai volunteered. People like him always freaked me out. The ones who had everything to lose, but still came here and landed Antonovs on the West River Parkway under fire and ran the hospitals after most of the doctors ran off to join the Cadets. Seems he was a kindergarten teacher back in Japan, and took a year off to do something that might really make a difference, as he put it. His wife had come too, and she was working in one of the clinics. That really blew me away. Said she didn't want to be apart from him. That made me want to go to the canteen and get shitfaced. They were both planning to stay the winter. While we were waiting, she showed me pictures of her house and her dog. The house was half the size of what I grew up in, and it looked like a palace compared to where I live now.

I watched the couple as they were saying their goodbyes. It was either that or talk to Tim. Godai's wife was going over a checklist, nodding and saying Hai a lot. They spoke really crappy English, but Tim spoke Japanese so it wasn't a problem. They were both dressed, like Tim, in civvie clothing. Both of them were sweating like anything, and you could see their nerves in every twitch of their hands and every little too-fast movement. I got a call on my celphone about the handoff, and when I looked up I'd lost track of the guy. This was bad because I was supposed to be reporting on everything he did. Some said he might be a spy. I found him by following the laughter. Around a corner, I found him squatting on the ground, surrounded by a circle of the kids who hang around the motor pool. He was drawing things for them in the sand, and they were laughing. It was so strange to see children laughing that I spent a whole five minutes just staring. Then I had to take him back. The kids followed him. Tim bribed them to leave us alone with chocolate.

As we stood by the Jeeps, Godai and his wife embraced. Tim and I watched. They kissed, the sort of kiss you see in movies. Some troopers actually stopped what they were doing and stared. It made me wonder if anyone might have ever seen Tim and I kissing like that, on a rooftop on a summer night. Now, I couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes.

As I escorted his jeep out of the compound, I wanted more than anything for him to succeed. I wanted to see him entering some big room at the University in that way that he does so that he looks like the tallest person in the room even though he's only five foot six. I wanted to see him speaking, saying the magic words that would have all the Cadet leaders smiling, laughing like children, ending all this.

At the fountain in the park, we stopped and made a final radio check with the enemy. I went around his jeep twice, making sure that the white flags were in place and that the ID numbers were clearly visible. This was stupid, since it was the only white Jeep around.

They flashed a signal. I stood at the door on his side, looking at him propped in the seat. I started to apologize for everything, but he just held up his hand and gave me that quiet smile that I knew so well, that said he was going to do what he had to do.

We'll talk when I get back, he said. Okay?

Yeah, I said, and turned away.

If I 'd stayed a minute longer, I'd have started bawling. Not a thing to do in front of the troops. I heard him say something to the driver and off they went. As soon as his Jeep disappeared over the rise in front of us, we had five minutes to get out so we burned rubber but we weren't fast enough so we got hit and I survived like usual even though I hadn't been in the field in two years and Helena gave me the job thinking she was doing me a favour and I got lost and I found Archer and we found the prisoner and know I'm holding the chocolate in my hand that Tim had in his jacket pocket. I'm sure of it. I'm also all alone.

I can't see Archer or the prisoner, but I can hear him grunting in the bunker on my left. I pick up the redlight and get out my pistol. The grunting stops.

"We haven't got time for this," I whisper, entering the bunker.

It stinks of death in there. I can't see him, because they're both inside, down this passage and around the corner. I'm rushing in because there's no time to lose and because I've been driving a desk for two years and I've gotten stupid. My redlight catches him. He's holding his rifle on me, pointed straight at my gut. I start to turn to run.

Bang.

They say you don't hear the one that kills you.

The strength goes out of me and I fall to one knee.

I feel bowels and bladder go at once.

I make a sound I've never made before, because I know after this comes the pain and I'll never be the same but it doesn't come and I don't know why.

It hits me and I fall, but it still doesn't hurt yet. This makes no sense. It didn't feel like a fist, not like a kick. It felt like someone running into me. My hand finds the redlight on the ground where I dropped it. I pick it up and shine it out the door.

He's standing there, straight up.

"Down," I shout, pure reflex.

There's something wrong with him, he's looking all over, like he's not seeing. He probably isn't, since one eye is hanging out on his cheek. He keeps clearing his throat, like he's about to make a speech.

There's a crack. He falls. I watch a red dot walk slowly across the trench wall in front of me. I freeze, not breathing. The red dot moves back and forth, then vanishes.

I make my way to the door. I look up. The fog's coming back in again. I look at Archer. He's still twitching, but he's dead. He's dead, and I'm not. This makes no sense.

I walked in on a stranger as he was raping my prisoner because I was thinking about Tim. I run the redlight over myself. No holes, everything seems to be intact. I'm so fucking lucky I almost burst out laughing. I don't. I stop. I think.

She's still in there, in the dark. She might be untied, but what from what little I saw, she's bound and half stripped, lying just inside the door and around the corner. He might have had a weapon that she could reach in his webbing, which must be in there since he isn't wearing it now. This is not good.

"Still alive in there?" I whisper.

No response. I get out my Gerber, and put the redlight back into my webbing. I crawl back into the bunker entrance, quietly as I can, until I'm right at the corner. I stand up, I let all my breath out, I don't breathe in. I hear her breathing faintly, through her nose. I throw myself around the corner at the spot where she was. I land knee-first in her chest, I grab her neck as her head comes up, and I slam it into the floor. She grunts, then chokes a little.

"Don't fucking move," I say.

I let go of her neck and get the redlight out. I shine it on the blade.

"You know what this can do," I say.

She coughs. I take a gag out of her mouth. Looks like it might have been her underwear.

"Tell me what you know," I say.

She nods. I get up. She turns her head and dry heaves. I shine the light on her. One eye is going blackish, starting to swell. Her pants are down around her knees, her t-shirt pulled up to her neck. She reeks of piss, even above the general background stink, but I can't tell if it's hers or his. I shine the light in the opposite corner. There's a body there, which explains the stink. Three days worth of rot, maybe, but then it got cold. If it hadn't, it wouldn't be possible to breathe in here. It's got a Ranger necktie. Next to it is Archer's rifle, looking fucked up. I check the serial number. It's one of those cheap as shit Nigerian AK 47 knockoffs. It's fucking unbelievable. I can't imagine how anyone but the most strung-out fucking twelve-year old would know this thing was more likely to kill its user than any enemy. I can't help wondering what the fuck Archer was doing out here.

It doesn't matter, of course. He's dead. She's alive, and she's got something to tell me. I kneel down beside her.

"The chocolate," I say.

She looks away. I grab her jaw and wrench her head around. I hold the blade of my Gerber in the redlight, all twelve inches of it.

"See this?" I say.

She nods. I start running its point over her skin, down from her neck to her gut, not drawing blood. She doesn't flinch, not yet. Time to turn up the heat. I cut her just below the navel, not much, just deep enough to hurt.

"Tell me," I say. "Where did you get the chocolate?"

She closes her eyes.

"You have two choices," I tell her. "First is, you tell me how you got the chocolate, and I'll kill you quick. Second is, you don't, and I'll gut you, and I'll make you watch. I'll leave you here to freeze, but you might get found, so I'll take some of the ground from under loser over there and stuff it in you, and you know what that means."

She opens her eyes. She knows. They did it to two men and one woman I knew. One poor bastard spent three weeks screaming in hospital before he died of gas gangrene. It's nothing I've ever done, but I'm staring to think that there might be a first time.

She starts to weep. Guess she isn't so tough.

"Tell me," I say.

"Sent me out to stop them," she whispers.

"Stop who?" I say. "The UN team?"

"Told me they were an attack," she whispers. "Anthrax bomb."

Shit. That's one thing we could do. I think it's the only reason that neither the Posse or the Cadets have overrun us yet.

"Under the white flag," she says. "Fake Blue Helmets were bringing it."

I go cold. There was an extra tank on that Jeep. Extra gas, the guys in the motor pool said.

"Bullshit," I say, weakly.

"I made a clean kill," she says.

I start trembling.

"I didn't know it was Drake," she says.

I'm so cold. I drop the knife.

"I checked out the jeep," she says. "I wasn't supposed to. There was no bomb."

Tim is dead.

"I had two men with me," she says. "They were back at the position. When I saw it was Drake, I ran. Threw away the rifle. Ran."

Tim is dead.

We'll talk when I get back, he said. Okay?

I switch the light off and drop to the floor. I curl up in the darkness and the tears come.

I've had sex with fifteen men, but I've only ever had one lover. Tim.

We'd meet on rooftops and go out and fight crime back when that made sense. On quiet nights, we'd kiss and on really quiet summer nights we'd make love on our capes, laid out on the tar. He was always the gentleman, always using protection even after I told him that they'd tied my tubes without asking me after I had my kid. I was pissed about it then, but I'm glad about it now. Wouldn't want to bring a kid into this.

It had to end. I found who he was, and he got really pissed about that. He went off to Gotham U, I went to work at Walgreens and to school at GCC at night. When the crash came, everything went on just like usual until the Eastsiders or niggers as most of my neighbours liked to call them raided the Walgreens. I got everyone out and held off the raiders with a dead rent-a-cop's pistol until help came. I was a big hero on the West side, and Helena Bertinelli recruited me for the militia she was putting together.

Tim came to see me one night not long after. We met on a rooftop. He told me to quit the Rangers. I refused. He said it could be the start of a civil war. I said I thought like the Eastsiders that the first one never ended. He called me a murderer, because I shot two gangstas while they were looting the corpse of some old lady they'd shot. He assumed that she'd been white, just like all the people on TV had. I told him to go fuck himself. He hit me. I hit him. We hit each other, then we were fucking, or trying to. Fucking disaster, more like. He couldn't, and I decided I didn't want to. He told me he'd put aside his mask and was trying to organize a civil defence force on the Northside. A militia, in so many words, I said. He disagreed. It was to be run by the business school students and profs in conjunction with the Gotham U ROTC. All weapons would be non-lethal, and the law would be maintained. We weren't so high-minded, but then the Rangers were mostly cops and Boy Scout leaders and weekend warriors. I told him it wouldn't stay clean. He said it would. We left without saying goodbye.

I saw him on TV over the next year, the smiling leader of the Cadets. At first so hopeful, then looking desperate as he tried to make excuses for the killings. One March evening, just after Wayne got himself killed, the old PBS station at Gotham U put on a trial. Tim was accused by the new Cadet leaders of having put together death squads. The cameras were on him all the time. He could barely stand up when they brought him into the courtroom at the old Law School. He admitted to killing over 120 people and to poisoning the reservoir in Beacon Park. When they sentenced him to hang, he thanked the judge.

I went out and got shitfaced for three days. When I dried out, there were rumors that he'd escaped during a big firefight at the prison and that someone else had been killed in his place. I assumed it was bullshit until I got the postcard. It had the CN Tower on one side and a little stamp with a maple leaf. It had old man's writing on it, with my address written in a different hand.

Why should I stay alive? was all he asked me.

It took me a month to figure out where he was. I sent him a fifty-page letter. I don't remember what was in it. I didn't hear from him for over a year, then we started sending letters every week. E-mail was gone, but we still had snail mail then.

We wrote to each other, but never talked on the phone. After two years, I got word he was coming to talk to the commander. I was assigned to his escort. When the Antonov landed and the Blue Helmets got out, I didn't see him. When we got to HQ, I reported that he hadn't arrived. Then the old guy who couldn't stand up without crutches smiled at me. I'd never been so scared. I avoided him for the rest of the day, but when he sent for me that night I went to him. I don't think I was ever braver.

He was lying on a couch, almost as if he was asleep. His hands were folded together in his lap. He looked at me and smiled with that smile I knew so well.

Is it really you? I asked him

He nodded. He was so tired he could barely move. I had this feeling that if he closed his eyes that he'd never open them again, he looked so frail. We talked for some time, about nothing at all. Not about the war, not about the dead. I wanted to run. I didn't. Not until he told me that he needed my help. Not with the war, but to go to the toilet. I helped him to his feet. He told me that he was having trouble keeping food down and keeping his weight over 100 pounds. I let go of him at the bathroom door for a moment, and he almost fell. The terror in his eyes as he swayed. I was shaking by the time a I got him into the can. Then I saw his hands. He only had two fingers on one, none at all on the other. He needed my help to get his shirt open. I was able to do that, but when I saw the scars and the colostomy bag, I froze up. All I could think of was him on a rooftop, so beautiful.

I ran. I heard him fall. I ran to the nearest canteen and got shitfaced. Next morning he was gone.

No more letters after that. No more contact until two days ago, when he arrived to negotiate the truce and Helena told me to go help. Helena, who'd put me behind a desk instead of having me shot when I took my squad out while I was drunk.

We'll talk when I get back, he said, just before he drove away to be murdered by the woman who lies three feet away from me, her teeth chattering in the darkness. This isn't too surprising, since she's half naked and it's below freezing. I smile. I shine the redlight on her. She's curled up in a ball, trying to stay warm. I pick up the knife.

Something.

Her teeth. They're not chattering as much. She's trying to hold them shut.

There's someone outside. I know it.

I listen. Nothing. A click from her teeth. Nothing.

I lay down the knife. Silently as I can, I turn her over and climb on top of her. I force my left glove into her mouth.

"Bite," I whisper.

She understands. I can feel her trembling beneath me. I can give her warmth, if it saves me. Even if it's my people out there, we're safer just walking past one another. There are rules and conventions out here. Pass the bunkers and pretend no-one's in them. Keep yourself alive. I listen. It's harder to hear over her breathing so close, but the feeling's still there.

I listen. We listen. Nothing.

I re-adjust, putting my arm behind her head to keep the other one in her mouth. Nothing.

Then, sand falling. Nothing. More sand falling, and a thud of someone landing in the trench. Then another.

"Shit," one of them whispers.

"It Ralph?" slurs the other.

"It's got a dick, peckerhead," says the first one. "It can't be Ralph."

She's rigid under me.

"Fucking crazy bitch," says the second one.

"Never figured she'd run," says the first one.

I'm on top of Ralph. They're looking for her. If she calls out--

There's a sound of cutting. Cutting meat.

"There's no time for that," says the first one.

"Gonna get me some presents," says the second.

If she cried out, they'd come for her and I'd die. She's not crying out. She's trying not to breathe, just like me.

"Come on, dammit," says the first one. "We're too damn close to their lines. You want the Spoiler to give you a Ranger Necktie?"

"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the--" says a tinny little voice before cutting off.

It came from where the body is, in here with us.

Can't breathe. No sound outside. Dead silence.

A spring goes. Something light and metallic hits the trench wall. Something that sounds like a 20-ouncer of coke hits the floor.

Fuel-air grenade with TwelveElevenTen seconds to go.

Nine. I could run out into their line of fire.

Eight. I might still be alive when they take their trophies.

Seven. If I don't move, I'll burn.

Six. I use these things to take out reinforced concrete bunkers.

Five. They're running. Which way to die?

Four. She's chewing on the glove, no, she's praying.

Three. I don't know how to pray.

Two. Give us this day our daily bread.

One. God forgive me.

Zero. Tim.

It sputters, then pops. It's a dud.

I still can't breathe. She's rigid. I'm rigid. I'm holding her so tight
she probably can't breathe anyways.

Nothing.

Gradually, so gradually, I let her go and take a small breath. I hurt all over.

Nothing.

I start to weep. I can't help it. I bury my face in her jacket and sob as quietly as I can. I feel her doing the same thing on my shoulder.

Nothing. Still nothing.

I'm so weak, I can barely move.

Nothing, no feeling. They're gone, and if they're not, there's fuck all I can do about it.

I take my hand out of her mouth, then roll off her. We both lie on the floor panting. I search the floor and find my redlight. I find my knife and pick it up. I shine it on the corpse. Sure enough, it's wearing a watch. I crawl over and pick up the arm. The LCD display shows 12:15. I smash the thing with the butt of my Gerber. I freeze and listen. Nothing. It would be stupid to wait after throwing a grenade. They had no idea who might be in here.

I shine my redlight on her. She's folded herself into a ball again, and she's shaking. I crouch down beside her, and turn her over. I make her look at me. She killed Tim.

"Are you Ralph?" I ask her.

"No," she says. "Not any more."

A 17-year-old and an 18-year-old boy, one black and white, their faces stripped of flesh. A 32-year-old sergeant, executed by a live grenade stuffed into her ass. A figure on a hill in facepaint holding a bow and wearing a necklace of ears. Ralph.

There are so many things I could do.

I could gut her, like I said I would.

I could stomp her until I achieve the same end.

I could cut out her eyes.

I could take her fingers.

I could take the fuel from the grenade, pour it on her, and listen to her scream as she cooked.

I could do any or all of these things, and Tim would still be dead.

I take the knife and cut the garbage tie. Her arms fall like wood. I sit her up and start rubbing them, to get the circulation going. She's staring at me wide-eyed. Guess it wasn't what she expected.

I leave her to cover herself, and check out Archer's webbing. I keep an eye on her, keep my Gerber handy. If she makes a move, I'll take her out. I don't find a compass. I don't find a GPS. I find bullets. I find what looks like two small bricks wrapped in plastic. I take a taste, then spit it out. Heroin. I take both bricks and put them in my ammo pouch.

She's gotten dressed, but she's still shivering. She's tough. I don't even bother with the pistol. Maybe it's a death wish. For every one who dies out here, one dies back where it's safe, by their own hands. I know it. I've seen it.

Outside, there's Archer's corpse. I shine my redlight on it, just for a moment. They took more than the ears. I've seen it so many times before, but now I can't look. Instead, I want to breathe life into the dead fucker, I want to pick him and scream at him. I want to ask him why he had to be an asshole murdering raping fuck instead of something else. I want to bring him back to life and tie him to a chair and make him tell me. Tell me what I want to hear. It's too much.

I'm crying now, holding onto the only thing out here there is to hold on to. She stands there, not holding me, as I bury my face in her shoulder once again. I can hear her muttering something repetitive, something that involves saying Hail Mary a lot. When I'm finished, I shine the light into her face. It's blank and dreamy, like a girl thinking about her first date. I turn the light away from her. I don't need to see that.

We're making our way west now, along the trenches. Two old bags, stinking like latrines. When the fog clears, we go to ground and wait for the clouds to come back. In ten minutes, if they hold up, we'll reach Ranger lines. If they don't shoot us or shell us, I'll be home and she'll be on her own. If it's been a bad night, they'll probably take her off to one side and put a bullet in the back of her head. If not, she'll be raped again, probably many times. If she says she's Ralph to the wrong person, she'll be lucky if they hang her. If she says it to the right person, they'll get her to tell them everything she knows and they might let her go. I'm going to tell Helena who she might be, but after that I'm not going to have anything to do with her.

I'm not going to tell Helena about the heroin, though. I know how I can change that into a new ID, and a trip out of here on a UN flight. I don't know where I'll go, but wherever it is, I'll have to lie low until I get the tats burned off. If they haul me in front of one of those UN tribunals, it might be ten years before they clear my name. If they clear my name. After that, I don't know. Do something boring, join the UN maybe, volunteer to drive a Jeep. Maybe someday I'll meet my prisoner again and we can talk about it all over dinner. Maybe after we say our goodbyes, I'll put a bullet in her head as she walks away. I'm not Tim, and I'm never going to be, but I could be something a lot better than what I am now.

FIN

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