Fog (21 page)

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 the 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?

There’s some dull pain and my limbs don’t seem to be working very well, but I slalom around trees, and men and kids with bombs. My ghillie and my slow movements conceal me. When I find my rifle, I realise how naked I’ve felt without it. Twelve bullets in my arm strap. That’ll do. I keep crawling. Now, my ears are singing. My chest and my pants feel wet. I think I’m losing blood, lots of it. Dull throbbing begins to inch up my leg. When I brush against a bush, pain shoots up my guts and I retch.

Bullets howl past me. Trembling, I roll to the nearest tree trunk. ‘Runner?’

‘Runner!’

No answer. I touch my ear, then the other. My earbud is gone. I must have lost it while flying off that tree. Shit.

I continue creeping forward. Intense agony grips me when two mortar teams come into view. Two teams; two men each. They are shelling the crap out of the forest. Asswipes. I aim at the first team, centre mass of the guy to the left. He falls, I fire again and man number two is down in a second.

The other team runs. Despite the pain, I have to grin. They misjudge my position. They hide behind a tree that would protect them if I were fifty metres to my right. But I’m not, so I see them clearly. I bring the reticle to the first man’s chest and fire. The second man abandons the mortar and runs.
 

I’m leaking and trembling like fuck. My vision is unsteady. I have to hurry. It feels like ages until I reach the foxhole, peel off the hatch, push my legs in and almost faint from the pain. Fuck. The MedKit. I need the fucking MedKit. Why is it so far away? Who put it at the far end of the foxhole? I need to lay my head on the chilly ground for a moment.

Ohshitohshitohshit
. I can’t leave Runner alone. The Bullshit Army is batshit crazy tonight. Okay, what’s first? Stopper the holes in my body. Breathe.
 

I rub my eyes and get to work.

The squeeze light throws a harsh glare on the situation. My ghillie is ripped and a large chunk is missing, my pants are soaked, my side is too. Shrapnel sticks out of my right thigh and my waist. How the heck did I move without screaming from pain? My breathing, I have to slow my breathing or I’ll faint from hyperventilation. Fuck. The ceiling is so low I can’t sit up to extract the pieces of wood and metal. I curl up as well as the constricted space allows and cut open my pants and shirt. The smell tells me I pissed myself. I’m more ashamed than anything. I think I should just lie down and die. Micka, the weakling, pissed her pants.
 

Fuck it. Help Runner first, then wash your arse. I’ll get us out of this crap, stinking pants or no.

Shit, this hurts so badly. Grunting, I fumble with the MedKit. Blood is oozing from the wounds. The amount is sickening.
Be faster, loser!

I spray disinfectant on the wound and on my knife, insert the blade between flesh and shrapnel, and pull. My teeth pierce my lips, drawing blood, silencing pain. Repeat. Repeat. Get shrapnel out. Don’t faint.
 

My vision narrows to a tunnel when I bandage my leg that seems too far away. Can’t make sutures. Hands won’t stop trembling. Four wounds there. Deep. Lots of blood.

My side. Harder to reach. More pain. I seem to be looking through my scope now. Sharp focus where there’s light at the end of a black tunnel. Insert blade, pull shrapnel, don’t puke. Disinfect. Bandage. Don’t cry.
 

Don’t cry.

My own whispered commands push me along. I have to fix my vision before I aim at anything. Or anyone. Don’t want to shoot Runner accidentally.

I switch off the squeeze light and press my hands against my eyes. Rest, just a minute. Then restart your system. The blackness feels as if I’m blind. About to panic, I switch the light back on; the tunnel vision is worse now. The tiny lamp is far away. I hold my hand up, try to find my fingers. Something weighs down on my chest and leg. I can’t breathe. I need to warn Runner. I have to…