Avenging Home (27 page)

As I tried to get up, I replied, “I don’t know about fun.”

He offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet. Once on my feet, I noticed the shooting had died down. There was still sporadic fire in the camp, but it all seemed to be concentrated in one area. I could hear faint radio chatter, very faint, and realized the ear bud had been knocked from my ear. I put it back in my ear as I searched for my pistol, finding it not far from where Billy and I had collided.

I caught the end of Sarge saying to rally at the swimming pools. I looked around at the bodies on the ground and checked on Danny. He was on the ground fumbling with a bandage.

Kneeling down, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Something hit my shoulder.”

Dalton was there quickly as well and ripped open Danny’s shirt. There was a small hole just below the collarbone. Dalton and I got him wrapped up and onto his feet.

“Can you move?” Dalton asked.

“Yeah, just hand me my rifle.”

I handed him his carbine and smiled. “Let’s go finish this.”

He shook his head. “You look like shit.”

I laughed. “You should see the other guy.”

Lee Ann handed me the M1. I slung it over my back and picked up the SAW. The four of us made our way over to the pools where everyone else was waiting. When Sarge saw us he was surprised.

“Holy shit! What the hell happened to you guys!”

“I ran into Billy, and Danny took a round to his shoulder,” I replied.

Doc quickly checked Danny out while Sarge looked at my nose. He grabbed it and moved it back and forth. It was like fire shooting through my head.

“Dammit, that hurts!” I shouted as I slapped his hand away.

Sarge giggled. “Yeah, that’s broke for sure.”

“Thank you for the stunning report, Captain Fucking Obvious!”

Doc said Danny would be alright for now and turned his attention to Dalton. “What the hell happened to you? There’s blood everywhere. Are you hit? You hurt anywhere?”

Dalton waved him off. “I’m good Doc. All my blood’s still on the inside. None of this is mine.”

Doc stepped back and asked, “What the hell happened?”

I stabbed my thumb at Dalton. “Conan here went all medieval on a bunch of them.”

Looking at me, Dalton replied, “I wasn’t the only one.”

“You finish Billy Boy?” Sarge asked.

“Yeah. He’s not going to be bothering anyone else.”

“I’d say so!” Dalton shouted. “You hacked his head to pieces. I’ve split logs with fewer swings!”

Sarge looked around. “Anyone else got any booboos?” Everyone looked themselves over and shook their heads. “Alright. This is almost over. There’s a group holed up over here in the gymnasium. All of the remaining combatants here have to be rooted out; and after it gets light out, every building has to be cleared. The Guard is working on that gym, so we can all take a quick rest and wait for daylight.”

We all sat down on the chairs by the pool. It was kind of strange to be sitting on a lounge chair beside a pool. But instead of coolers and floats, we had automatic weapons at our side. Of course this pool was a green swamp, but it still looked like a pool. Mike made it to the pool and flopped onto a chair. Looking at Sarge, he said, “You made me hump that damn mortar in here and you didn’t even use it?”

“We didn’t need it. Better that way. We still have the ammo.”

Mike shook his head. “Didn’t need it?”

“Oh dry up! Better we have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!”

Jess brushed hair from her face and said, “That was easier than I thought it would be.”

Looking over, I replied, “Speak for yourself.”

“Aric killed like six people,” Fred said proudly.

“Shit, you ain’t even limited out yet!” Sarge barked.

Doc came over and knelt down in front of me. “Let me see that nose.”

I tilted my head back and said, “You pinch it and yours will look like mine.”

He laughed. “I ain’t going to pinch it.”

Yeah, he didn’t pinch it in the proper sense. But he mashed it around and it hurt like hell. He looked in my nose with a small light and asked, “Can you breathe alright?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it just feels like it’s full of snot.”

“That’s blood, not snot. And don’t try and blow it out. Let the clot stay there for now.”

In his oh so polite way, Sarge said, “You’re going to look like shit tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, well this will get better. What’s your excuse?”

As the sun began to break the horizon, we were able to see more around us. It was a ghastly scene. There were bodies lying everywhere. The imagery was compounded by the smell of the burning structures, trucks and the unmistakable smell of burning fuel. Mixed in and nearly overpowered by the other odors, but still there, was the iron-like smell of blood and raw meat.

People just aren’t prepared for what this really looks like. It isn’t like in the movies. I could it see on our people now. Lee Ann was looking around. She was pinching her nose and had a disgusted look on her face. Fred, so proud a moment ago about Aric’s body count, was now bent over getting sick. Aric was patting her back as she wretched.

Then there was Thad. He was dealing with it by not looking. He stared at the ground at his feet. Mike and Ted were oblivious to it all. They were actually eating a biscuit that Mike pulled from his pack. As though nothing happened and it was just another day.

I looked in the direction of the group the door gunner and I had taken down. They were scattered over a grassy area on a slight slope. They were over a hundred yards away and I got up and started to walk towards them. Something drew me towards them.

The closer I got the more clearly I could see them. I was struck by what I was seeing. I stopped in front of the one I’d shot trying to get up. Kneeling down, I brushed the girl’s hair out of her blood-splattered face. She was young, I’d say sixteen or so. She wore only a t-shirt and her underwear. She was a pretty girl and now she was dead. Looking the group over, there were several other women, though thankfully this was the youngest. All were barely dressed, and all of them were barefoot.

Some of the bodies were chewed to pieces. Having caught the full wrath of the door gunner. The image of that red stream of death coming down amongst them returned to me. I could remember seeing them in the NVGs, but I didn’t recall seeing women. Had I realized that, I have to wonder if I would have had it within me to shoot them. But in the moment, that’s not what I saw.

I was surveying the scene when Sarge’s voice came over my shoulder. “These the ones that were maneuvering around you?”

Shaking my head, I replied, “They weren’t maneuvering. They were running for their fucking lives. And I shot them.”

We stood in silence for a moment. I was staring at the side of the girl’s face. Her eyes were open but it was very obvious there was no life in them. When a person dies, the eyes lose that gleam, that light. There was no light in any of the eyes of these people. Looking at the girl, I wondered what those eyes had seen. What kind of good, what kind of fun times she’d seen in her life. On the other side of that coin was the thought of what sort of horrors they’d seen. And to know that the last thing they saw was the muzzle flash from the machinegun with me behind it was too much.

Tears started to run down my face. I was supposed to be helping people. Saving them from this very sort of horror. And here, now, there was no way to deny the fact that I was the one to perpetrate the very horror I think I’m preventing.

Sarge stepped up beside me. After a moment, I heard him take a deep breath. “Morgan. When you saw these people in the dark, running, what did you think?”

I looked at him. He was looking at the bodies. “What do you mean?”

He looked at me and there was a softness to him. Sarge was always a little rough around the edges, crusty in a dry dog turd kind of way. A product of a lifetime spent in the service of his country. When he wasn’t pissed off, he was usually fucking with you. But now, I could tell he was being sincere. “In the dark, when you looked down the barrel of that weapon. What did you see?”

I looked at the broken and bent bodies again. “I didn’t see a group of women and girls fleeing for their lives.”

Sarge stepped around in front of me and looked directly into my eyes. “I know you didn’t see that, Morgan. If you had, you’d have never pulled the trigger. Hell, I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. But I didn’t ask what you didn’t see. I asked what you did see.”

I tried to look past him, but he side-stepped, staying right in front of me and staring into my eyes. I thought about the question. I closed my eyes and saw it again, plain as day. “I saw a group of people running.”

“Where were they running?”

“They were running for the bush.”

“Did you think there was a damn good chance they had weapons?”

Again, I thought about the question. I remembered pushing Lee Ann out of the way and moving the weapon. I remembered falling behind it and the red tracers speeding away from me. I remembered the demonic tracers from the Minigun. At that moment, I certainly thought they had weapons. I nodded my head and wiped away the increasing tears running from my eyes. “Yes.”

“And had those armed people gotten past you, do you think your friends, your daughter, could have been killed?”

Rocking my head to the side, I shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

Sarge put his hands on my shoulders and I opened my eyes. He was still looking straight into mine, and I was surprised to see what could have been the beginning of tears in his. “Morgan. What you did was what anyone would have done. Do you think all those guys that come back from combat overseas have PTSD from being shot at? That’s only a small part of it friend. Hell, that’s a release. I’ve been shot at in more countries than I can remember. What sticks with you is this shit.”

He stepped aside and pointed at the bodies. “This is the shit that wakes you up at night. This is the kind of shit that gives you nightmares. I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re thinking about your girls.” He knelt down and gently closed the girl’s eyes. Looking back up at me, he said, “I am too.” He stood up and put his arm around me and pulled me around, away from the carnage. “The moles that have never seen combat call this collateral damage. That’s bullshit from assholes that have never smelled cordite, blood, piss and shit. This will stay with you forever.” He looked at me. “And it should. You shouldn’t forget. It would be a dishonor to the people that lost their lives here. But you need to understand that at the time, at that moment when you pulled the trigger, you did it for a reason bigger than yourself.”

I’d managed to get control of myself as I thought of what he was saying. He was right after all. I didn’t do it out of maliciousness. I wasn’t blood thirsty or wanting to inflict unnecessary pain or misery. But that really didn’t make it any easier to live with. “I know what you’re saying. It makes sense.” I tried to turn back. I was going to point at those poor souls, but Sarge held me tight and wouldn’t let me. “But it doesn’t change the fact those people are dead because of me.”

“Don’t look back, son. What’s done it done. And I know you’re holding yourself responsible for it all. But you have to remember there was a door gunner up there with a Minigun, and he was raining some serious hell down on them.”

As we made our way back to the group, I replied, “True. But that girl. She was hit, and went down. She tried to get up and I finished her. She’s totally on me.”

Sarge’s hand gripped my neck. “Son. What’s done is done. Nothing you can do will ever take it back. It’s hard. Believe me, I know it’s hard. I’m not going to bullshit you and tell you it gets easier with time, ‘cause it don’t.” Dropping his arm around my shoulders, he continued. “But you have to make peace with it, for yourself. Not for anyone else. You have to know that what you were doing, why you pulled the trigger, you were doing for us. For your daughter over there. You had no way of knowing in that moment who those people were.”

I nodded and wiped at my nose. It hurt like hell and I winced. “I know. I get it.”

Sarge stepped in front of me, stopping me. “No. You don’t, but you need to. You’re not a hard man, Morgan. And I don’t mean that with any disrespect, but you’re not. Some people are—“ I interrupted him.

“Like you?”

Sarge’s head dropped. Then he looked back up at me. “Son, I’ve done some horrible things in my day. But I always did them because it was what I thought was right. It was what my government told me to do. And mainly, always, because it was what I needed to do for the men I was with.” He paused and ran his hands through his hair. “You don’t think I have regrets? You don’t think I wake up at night in a cold sweat? But when bullets are flying and people are dying, there is the now. And you did no less.”

His words were sinking in. While the old man always had a way with words, they weren’t always like this. He was good at being an ass. At making a scene. But he wasn’t as gifted at trying to express himself in a real and meaningful way. Sure, he knew how to motivate people, for better or worse. This was just a side of the old codger I wasn’t used to seeing.

“I understand,” I said and stopped.

Sarge stopped and looked at me. “I don’ think you do. Not yet anyway. But I hope it comes to you, Morgan. You need to know that what you did, you did for us.” He pointed at our group sitting by the pool. Looking back at me, he said, “You did it for all of us.”

It finally sank in. Combat, a world I was not really accustomed to, was not black and white. It was a thousand shades of gray. Shit happens. Bad shit happens. Sometimes good people die. Sometimes the wrong people die. But today, my people didn’t die. And right now, at this moment, that’s all that mattered.

The sun was now above the horizon. Small arms still crackled not far off. For what seemed like the first time, I looked around. The scene was terrible. Bodies and pieces of bodies were everywhere. To make it worse, some of them were moving. Shading my eyes with my hand, I took it in. It was dawn, a new day. It was supposed to be a new opportunity, a clean start. Yet what I saw was far from it.

Not far from where Sarge and I stood was a man in pair of shorts and dirty t-shirt. His underwear was dirty as well; and from where I stood, it looked as though he’d soiled himself. But then I couldn’t blame him. Had I been shot in my lower back as he was, the least I would do would be to soil myself. He was pulling himself with his arms, trying to get away from the camp. I looked at him as he crawled.

In a moment of exhaustion, he dropped his head to the ground. He was looking at me and I could see the small buffs of dust his breath created on the ground. Reaching up, I patted Sarge on the shoulder. I kind of understood now. More would come later. I walked past him towards the prostrate man. While he didn’t lift his head, I could see him looking at me.

The look on his face was almost relief. As I stepped up to him, he let out a hard breath, blowing dust and dry grass out before him. I stood over the man. He said nothing, simply closing his eyes. Drawing my pistol, I took a deep breath. I too felt the relief wash over me. Lowering the muzzle of the XD, I pulled the trigger.