A rough tap to my shoulder wakes me. My lids are 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 a dozen 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 is this happening? How? But there’s no time to ask questions; Runner turns to walk away.
‘You do not go alone.’ My healthy leg shoots forward, my foot hooks around his ankle, and he stumbles. ‘You will not go alone,’ I repeat.
‘Fine. Get up then.’
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. Can’t say 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.
At this rate, it will take until Christmas for me to arrive. I speed up. Sweat soaks my shirt and face. My ruck is glued to my back and thick red liquid begins to ooze down my leg and trickles onto my bare foot. Shit. This makeshift bandage isn’t worth a fly fart.
When I finally find Runner, his face is unrecognisable; it’s that of an old man. He’s gazing through his scope as if he could change what he sees simply by wishing for it. I know how that feels.
I drop my ruck and my rifle, gingerly sit down and touch his shoulder. ‘Tell me what you see,’ I say, coaxing him into mission mode.
‘The machine is burned out. Two men are standing at approximately fifteen metres distance from the wreck. The flames are too…’ He swallows. ‘Too high.’
‘What about the helicopter?’
‘Down.’
I wipe thoughts of Yi-Ting and Ben away. My brain doesn’t process lost lives, it shows me only what’s to happen next. I hand Runner my canteen. He takes a sip, his mind far away. ‘Get up,’ I say. He blinks at me and stands.
He helps me with my ruck and rifle, and we march off together, bloodthirst burning in my trigger finger. Trees, bushes, rocks, and small streams only touch the corner of my vision. Irrelevant information is pushed to the back of my mind; all I do is count down the remaining metres’ distance to the camp while scanning our surroundings for the enemy. The lower half of my body is aching; it’s registered as a nuisance and shut off. Walk. Climb. Move forward. We reach a crest, quickly cross it, and hike down again. We have to stay invisible and that often lengthens our walks. No hiking along riverbeds or exposed hilltops.
‘You are bleeding,’ he points out and stops. ‘Sit down. We’ll take a short break.’
Now, I’m glad to rest my leg. He helps me pull down my pants then unwraps the bandages.
‘No one survived?’ I ask, knowing the answer already. But I have to make sure.
He shakes his head no and extracts the MedKit from his ruck.
‘The helicopter crew?’
‘I don’t know. The machine went down on the other side of the camp.’
We both know what happens to survivors. ‘We need to hurry,’ I tell him.
‘I know. But we have to arrive in one piece. You need a few stitches. No morphine this time, though.’
‘Did I use it all up?’ Maybe that’s why I slept like a log.
‘No. But the drug tempers with your aim.’
‘Oh. Okay. No morphine, then. Do your thing.’ I lean back and look up at the foliage.
The coolness of the disinfectant and the faint whiff of alcohol tells me the pain is about to come. And shit does it hurt! How can such a small needle hurt like that when I didn’t even feel the shrapnel enter my leg and side?
It takes effort to stay in control — my knees vibrate from the pain, my teeth grind against each other.
‘Two more,’ he says softly. ‘And now, the last one.’
He cuts off the thread and again sprays disinfectant on the wound. His warm palms rest on my knees until they stop trembling. As he wraps a fresh bandage around my leg, he whispers, ‘She told me she loved me.’
Unable to say anything helpful, I place my hand over his.
He lowers his head and looks down at our intertwined fingers as if he’s never seen anything like it.
‘Just like that,’ he continues. ‘Without really knowing me, she offered me her love and I didn’t say anything nice in return.’
Confused, I don’t make a peep. If he wants to tell me what this all means, he will do so in his own time.
We empty our canteens, eat a few nuts, and the last piece of cold meat.
I think of Yi-Ting, her honesty and kindness. She sees people when she looks at them. She sees what’s there and she doesn’t judge. In her eyes, my… In her eyes everything seems to be beautiful. She sees when someone needs something, finds the right words to make people feel better. When I feel lonely, she sits with me or runs with me. She cares. And… And she never seemed to think much about what she wanted for herself.
I notice the change from “she is” to “she was” and it breaks my heart. I think of kissing her skin, right on that place at the wing of her hipbone, and on her slender neck. Her flavours spread from the tip of my tongue to the depths of my throat. Flavours of plum and tuna, and of forest berries dancing in a wooden bowl. Swallowing, I force the water from my eyes.
I think of Ben. His humour, his ridiculous hair that looked like a bunch of golden baby curls, his recklessness and courage, his big heart. All that flirting was probably just his way of living. He loved life, the world and all women in it.
I look down at our hands still clutching one another, and I wonder how some people can be on a battle field for weeks or even years, and stay sane. Maybe they don’t. Will I know if or when I lose my mind? I gaze up at Runner who seems to be sanest person in the world. His presence is the calm eye of the storm; his measured voice, his physical and mental strength, his kindness. But there’s a rage deep inside that’s formidable and frightening. I’ve seen it when he’s squeezing off round after round. There is darkness in him rattling at the cage. And I know that, once it breaks out, I’ll be holding his hand, letting it spill out and over me and taking it away from him, and I’ll be telling him that I know how it feels, because I do. The presence of his darkness mends my own darkness. I’m safe when he’s around.
He meets my gaze and nods. It’s time.