Fog (22 page)

‘Micka?’

I fly. No, I…

———

Leaves above me. Stars. A face. Runner?

‘Micka?’

He brushes a finger against my cheeks.

I hurt.

‘Drink.’

A canteen is pressed to my lips, liquid trickles down my chin and neck. I take a sip. And another. My view tilts.

———

I wake to searing pain. Someone grunts; the funny feeling in my throat tells me it must be me making noises.

I open my eyes and see Runner fiddling with my leg. A thread, a needle — up and down. I bite my cheeks.

‘Almost done,’ he says.
 

‘How many left?’ I manage.

‘Stitches?’

I shake my head no.

‘Twenty-five or thirty.’

‘No, the kids. How many kids?’ I don’t give a shit about the men.
 

‘Six.’

Six. Less than half. Runner shot one. I shot one. The BSA blew up or slaughtered the others. How many more until this is over? I realise that I’ve begun to count our time here in lives, not days.

‘How far away are we?’ I ask.

‘From the camp? Far enough for now, as long as you don’t scream.’

I nod. ‘I must tell you something,’ I hiss through clenched teeth.

‘Not now, Micka. Later. You need to rest.’

‘It’s important. Listen. Please.’ I’m close to panic and have no clue why.

‘It’s okay.’ His hand presses mine for a short moment. It’s sticky with blood. ‘I’m listening.’ He goes back to stitching up my wounds.

 
I clear my throat. ‘One sunny day I asked… I asked my brother to take me up to the reservoir and teach me how to swim. We weren’t allowed up there, all alone, because he had epilepsy and I couldn’t swim. But I begged him anyway, bugged him for hours until he agreed. My parents had no idea we were up there.’

I swallow and think of the sunlight reflecting off the reservoir water. ‘It was a beautiful day and I was ready for anything. I would swim no matter how much water ended up in my windpipe.’ I squeeze my eyes shut. A curved needle is inserted into my thigh, and pushed back out. I feel the roughness of the thread. ‘I felt invincible. We played in the water, always close enough to the edge so his feet could reach the ground when he had to support me or pull me out by my hair or arm.’ The memory is sweet, but the bitter aftertaste is coming now.
 

‘Then, with a snap, his eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth opened wide as his head went under. He sucked in so much water; he was so stiff, so heavy. He sank like a rock. All I did was to scream. I watched him die and…and all I did was scream and save myself.’

I don’t look at Runner’s face. All I see are his hands, working on my wounds. He must be disgusted with me.
 

I am, too. ‘That same night, my father cut the word “die” in my back. A few years later, I learned that I’m not his daughter and that he lost his only child because of me. But…’ I huff a laugh because I don’t know what else to do. Tears try to choke me but I won’t let them.
 

‘I let my brother die and all I can think is “How did it feel?” and I hate myself for this. My brother was the only person I loved and I cannot remember how it felt. Because I… Since that day, I’ve been hurt so often that… It hurt so much, I stopped feeling and I forgot how… how love feels. I feel like… I feel like I’m not whole without knowing… I don’t want to die before…’

‘Ssshhh,’ he says. His face is close to mine. Bloody fingers caress my cheeks. ‘You won’t die today. You’ve lost blood, yes. But no vital parts are injured.’ Black eyes gaze into mine. His serenity, his palm cupping my face, calms me.

‘Okay,’ I breathe.

He disappears from view, then reappears with a syringe. ‘I’ll give you a second shot of morphine. Your side needs a few stitches and you need sleep. Okay?’

I nod and turn my head away. Funny how one can suck up shrapnel but get woozy when stuck with a tiny needle.

———

I’m sitting at the base of a tree, my back comfortably leaning against Runner’s ruck. He stitched me up. He washed me. He cleaned and fixed my clothes, my pissed and bloody pants. Now, he’s making dinner. I dimly remember babbling something about my brother. I want to hide, but I’m sure he wouldn’t let me.

‘Have some,’ he says and holds out half of the bird he’s cooked. He holds my gaze as I take the offered food. ‘You are mortified,’ he notes.

I give him a single nod. What a great warrior I am. The warrior who pissed herself. Yuck. I look up at him and ask, ‘Why did my body betray me? Maybe I…I shouldn’t be here. I’m a wimp. I pissed my pants back there.’

He smiles. Why the heck does he smile? ‘I crapped myself in that cow carcass,’ he says. ‘I pissed my pants on my first day in battle, and another time when a shell hit so close that a building came down on me. Each time, I was lucky I survived. Your body didn’t betray you. It did everything it needed to survive. Irrelevant things like bladder control were ignored.’

My heart is racing, my mind circling around the men I’ve killed, the child. Memories of shells exploding, trees splintering, people screaming, all make me flinch in bright daylight; and the faces of the men just before my bullet opens their chests or bellies.

I press my hand to my mouth for fear of retching.

‘Will it get less difficult with time?’ I whisper.

‘The killing? Not much.’

‘I’d hoped—’

‘That you can take lives with ease?’ he stops to look at me.

‘Do you see them in your memories or in your dreams? The men you’ve shot? The faces of the children?’

‘I’ll never forget the children. The men, though…’ He doesn’t take his sharp gaze off me. ‘A few of the men keep coming back — in nightmares, memories.

‘And what do you…do then?’

‘I ask them how many women and children they’ve raped and tortured, how many kids they’ve sent into battle and how many of them they’ve blown up, how many men they’ve killed, how many families they’ve torn apart, how much land they’ve burned and contaminated.’

‘Sounds too simple,’ I croak.

‘Yeah. It’s simple. But it’s why I pull the trigger.’ He picks the skin off the bird’s breast and sticks it into his mouth, then runs his sleeve over his short-cropped beard. ‘I’ll go back in tonight.’

‘I’ll come.’

He glares at me. ‘Forget it!’ He almost spits out the food.

‘Two days left. I’ll come.’

‘You can barely walk.’

‘You help me get there. I’ll crawl into a foxhole. Not much walking needed.’

He drops the gnawed-off bone into the embers. Before he can open his mouth, I say, ‘I won’t let you go alone. If you leave me here, I’ll crawl all the way. I mean it.’

‘Sleep first.’

I flash him a grin and roll my sweater into a pillow, then place it demonstratively on the stock of his rifle. If he wants to leave at midnight, he has to wake me up.

‘You are such a…’
 

‘Yeah?’ I say. Oh shit, I hope I wake up when he leaves. Something tells me I’ll barely be able to move my legs then.

A rough tap to my shoulder wakes me. My lids seem to be glued together, my eyeballs feel like sandpaper.
 

‘Micka, wake up. Something’s wrong.’

I blink up at him. ‘What? Where?’

He points up at the dark sky, but I can’t see a thing there. I rub my eyes, my vision swims.

‘It’s their machine, Ben and Yi-Ting’s. They’re assaulting the camp,’ he explains in a raspy voice. ‘Looks like a hasty rescue mission. I’ve tried to contact Kat more than ten times in the past twelve hours. She doesn’t answer.’

The clouds are thinning and stars begin to pinprick the black. My surroundings come into focus, a spectrum of grey, deep blue, and black. And there, flying low over the treetops is the familiar airplane. Black dots drop from its side.

‘What are they throwing at the camp?’

‘Gas bombs, I believe. There must be another machine, one that carries our ground team. A helicopter, most likely.’ He pulls his rifle from underneath my sweater pillow, humps his ruck, and throws the ghillie over his head and shoulders. Automatically, I look up, searching for a white dot watching us from thousands of kilometres above.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he says. ‘But I’ll find out. They were scheduled for the day after tomorrow.’

Thoughts tumble over each other in my mind. The clear sky, our visibility, the great risk Ben and Yi-Ting are taking. Why has this happened? How? But there’s no time to ask questions; Runner turns to walk away.

‘You don’t go alone.’ My healthy leg shoots forward, my foot hooks around his ankle, and he stumbles. ‘You do not go alone,’ I repeat.

‘Fine. Get up then,’ he growls.

Fuck me if I can move my injured leg even a centimetre without feeling sick from the pain. Grunting and hissing, I roll on my side and push up onto my healthy knee. The ground sways a little. Runner snorts and fury explodes in my chest. Growling, I grab his pant leg and pull myself up to a wobbly standing position. I show him my teeth. Not my middle finger, though.

‘Your ruck,’ he points out. ‘And your rifle. Or do you want to leave without them?’

Asshole. I stretch my arm and hook my fingers into the strap, then pull the heavy thing toward me. Only reluctantly does it follow my orders.

‘You are too slow.’

‘Fuck you. Help me put this thing on my back or piss off! I’ll catch up in a few.’

His expression softens. He lifts the ruck and helps me put my arms through the shoulder straps. The pack is strangely too light.

‘The heavy equipment is in my ruck,’ he explains quietly.

I nod and clench my butt cheeks. He prepared for this, and tested me to see if I have the guts to bite through the pain. I can’t claim it was a stupid move.

‘Lean on me,’ he says then, and I feel the urge to throw my arms around him and weep his shirt wet. He drapes my ghillie over my head, shoulders, and backpack, and we walk together. Every step is a tiny bit lighter and less painful than the previous one.
 

Up in the night sky, the small aircraft circles over the camp, evading machine gun fire, dropping gas bombs. They’ll get the kids out, I know it. I’m so relieved, I start grinning. The prickling flavours of victory spread in my mouth. A
chop-chop-chop
thunders from somewhere behind us.

‘The helicopter,’ Runner says.

I’ve never seen one flying, so I twist my neck while staggering through the forest with Runner’s arm around my waist.

‘Come on, Micka. We need to hurry.’

I inhale to curse the unruly terrain, but my words get slapped back into my mouth. The sky gives birth to a fire ball.
 

We watch, open-mouthed, as the small machine tumbles.
 

‘No,’ Runner breathes, and lets go of me. My foot catches on something, maybe a rock. I fall, and pain shoots up my thigh when I feel a suture tear open.

We watch the tail of fire and smoke and listen to the screeching of the aircraft, hoping it’s not the screams of our friends dying. Wings wobble and a second missile zips into the small machine, slamming it aside. I think of a paper airplane and lift my hands to catch them, to hold them, slow their descent and blot out the fire. But they are too far away and my arms are weak; even Runner’s wouldn’t do any better. How small we are. A keening squeezes through my throat.
 

The machine hits the trees and the unforgiving ground. Flames shoot in all directions — a roaring monster, exhaling fire and ash. There must have been explosives on board. I shake my head, wondering what shitty plan Kat has brewed up.
 

It’s impossible. They can’t be dead. Someone else must have flown the machine. I find myself wishing that Kat had been the pilot and it was some stranger dropping the gas bombs.
 

Runner wraps his arm around my chest and lifts me off the forest floor. ‘Come on,’ he urges me onwards. Onwards. My wounds scream for a break and I tell them to shut the fuck up. My friends!

My friends.

Maybe they are still alive.
 

I’m no help here.

‘Runner, I’m too slow. Go find them. I’ll follow.’

He stops and cocks his head. There’s cold efficiency in his eyes. I nod at him, and he dashes off.
 

I grab the next available tree for support. Something hot seeps through my pants. I lean against the trunk and give the mess a short inspection. There’s no time to take my pants off, unwrap the bandage and redo the suture. A temporary fix must do.

I slip my knife into my shirt just below my shoulder, cut the sleeve off, and tie it firmly over the bleeding wound. There’s a branch on the ground I can use as a crutch. I kick at protruding twigs, breaking them off. If I were to bend down, I might not be able to get back up. The foot of my good leg hooks under the branch, moves it, then carefully pulls it up. I snatch it and put it under my armpit.

Okay, legs, we can do this together, one foot in front of the other. Just do what my brain tells you. Here we go.

It takes a while to synchronise the rhythms of crutch and limbs, but I’m moving, at least I’m moving.