Tremble (57 page)

“Fuck you too. And send my love to Cordoba.”

It was a programmed knowledge that drew the animal to its prey. A sensibility wired into it thousands of moons before. Was it vulnerability, a certain doubting nature, that the bat craved? Or perhaps its motivation was more incidental than that—an unusually high temperature, a racing heart, a certain plasma type. Whatever the characteristic, it had existed in mankind from the moment the first
homo sapiens
had drawn breath in an African cave and a small bat, nesting above the primitive family, had opened its hooded eyes, disturbed by the bawling infant. War and blood, pounding fear and sheer terror—they all had a smell.

The bat swooped low over the moon-drenched beach, a bluish pebbled strip against which the ocean beat endlessly as it had for millennia, oblivious to the burned-out landing craft lying like an upturned beetle in the surf.

The animal flew over the curve of the harbor, then, using its sonar, hugged the cliff face as it swept down toward battle.

“Jimmy five over to base, request permission to advance, over, request permission to advance.”

“Permission granted, suggest three degrees north to join left flank.”

The radio operator pulled off his headphones and gestured to the commanding officer. Finally some action, Clive thought, and not a moment too soon—his toes felt as if frostbite had set in and his numbed brain couldn’t imagine anything worse than staying there a minute longer, not even hand-to-hand combat.

“Prepare bayonets,” the CO whispered. Grimly the four men reached for the scabbards fastened neatly to their belts, each praying the enemy wouldn’t hear the telltale click as they fixed the blades to the rifles. Clive swung the weapon up to hip height, ready to spring over the ridge. He loosened his chin straps in case he received a head injury and braced himself for the command that would send them running over the lip of the trench and straight toward the line of battle.

“Advance.” The commanding officer threw his arm forward. All four men scrambled up over the icy mud and ran full pelt toward the wasteland that suddenly yawned in front of them.

Immediately there was a series of flashes to Clive’s left. He realized it was machine-gun fire coming at them from a hidden Argie dugout. Clive fired back then dropped to the ground. In that second there was a thud then a blinding explosion. Phosphorus lit up the area and the man running in front fell, taking Clive with him.

He lay facedown as pieces of shrapnel, flesh, and earth rained down, praying as the futility of his life passed through him like a night sweat. Not me, not me, not now, please God not me…. The chant went on until the thudding in his eardrums subsided and the external world rushed back, and with it an acceleration of time. Survival. A possible future. Check your limbs, eyesight, weapons.

Everything seemed intact. Sound returning first, as a distant wailing that disorientated him, taking him back to the police sirens of Northern Ireland—the first thing you’d hear after a bomb attack—then the wailing intensified into screaming.

Clive lifted his face. It was the soldier next to him, the cockney, his ashen face rolled toward Clive’s, eyes popping in terror. Blood spurted out of the stump where his leg should have been onto the snow. The Welshman ran over. Crouching, he pulled a torque tight around the wound and screamed for a medic. Clive reached for the headset Cedric had thrown down next to the dying soldier, then something hit him in the back of the neck. A bullet or a piece of flying shrapnel in the narrow strip of exposed flesh between his collar and helmet. The force of it knocked him back to the ground.

Unsteadily he raised himself to his knees and touched his neck, terrified that it might be a serious injury and it was only shock keeping him alive. There was blood on his fingers. A bullet graze it had to be, a near hit by some invisible sniper.

Something pale flickered at the perimeter of his vision; it looked like a piece of torn sailcloth rising and falling on the night wind, strangely incongruous over a battlefield. It disappeared into the hazy horizon and Clive forgot it.

The bat licked the blood from its stained muzzle. The taste was a resounding medley of color fusing into harmony but there was a note missing, a complementary underpinning, high-pitched, pure, and soulful. The animal’s sonar moved forward over the rocky terrain, reading, searching.

The landscape was rendered a smoky red with boulders translating as large dark stationary masses against the silhouette of a crimson sky. That was the trouble with these night-sight goggles, Juan thought, his head unnaturally heavy from the equipment, you couldn’t tell lumps of rock from abandoned tanks. Suddenly one of the masses began to move, running from one edge of his night sight to the other. Lifting the machine gun, he aimed and fired. The movement of the gun ratcheted up his arm. A howitzer to his right burst into action a second later, firing in the same direction. Gustavo. The mass stopped, then dropped to the ground.

“Have we got them?” Juan screamed, pushing the goggles to his forehead. Gustavo joined him. Very cautiously Juan moved his head to the gap between the mounds of earth so he could peer out of the buried post. A tracer bullet whistled past, narrowly missing him, and buried itself in a sack in the opposite wall. Immediately sand began to trickle out.

“Where are the bastards hidden? In the mud like fucking lizards?” Gustavo hissed behind him. Juan crossed himself, thanking Jesus for his survival.

“If they know where we are, we are sitting ducks!”

“How can they know? No one can see a fucking thing through that mist.”

“Then how could they know where to fire?”

“Some gringo got lucky, that’s all, relax.”

The others began to argue about whether to abandon the post or not. Juan leaned against the freezing wall and felt for his rosary tucked safely in an inner pocket. Another four hours in this hellhole and he’d go crazy.

“We’ll die of cold or boredom, or maybe both.”

“So? It might be a better way than being sliced to pieces by some mad fat Englishman.”

They laughed, but the youngest among them—Carlos, barely seventeen—looked frightened. “Listen, you guys, I have a fiancée, she’s expecting me home.”

“You, a fiancée? You haven’t even popped your cherry yet!”

“I don’t care what you say, I think we should cut our losses and fall back. We’ve been here for two days and what have we done? Nothing.”

Arguing broke out again. The kid had a point: apart from a few sporadic bursts of gunfire and a few casualties, the post felt obsolete, like some forgotten island in the middle of a vast stormy sea. It wasn’t a reassuring feeling.

When Juan turned to the others, everyone looked up to listen—even his superior officer—because the soldier was famous for speaking only when it was important. He paused for a second, secretly thrilling at the anticipation on the eager faces. Leadership suited him, he knew it; it heated his blood.

“We should radio to see whether they have a position on the advancing troops and then make a decision.” He addressed the commanding officer directly, then, for the sake of decency, added a questioning “
No?
” so the man wouldn’t feel as if his authority was being threatened.

“I was just going to suggest that myself,” the officer replied, glancing furtively at the expectant soldiers. Immediately the radio operator got to work.

Satisfied, Juan reached into his rations and began to chew on some beef hash, the salt flooding his body with renewed energy. It was good to know he still had his sense of taste; hunger made him human again.

“They have a position on advancing troops—five miles north of us. Base says they will have backup here within the day.”

“Bullshit, they said that yesterday.”

“I say we stay.”

“Doesn’t our opinion count?”

“This is the army, not a fucking democracy. I’m the highest-ranking officer here and when I say we stay, we stay.”

Juan looked back at the terrain—it was eerily quiet, unnaturally so. Something had to give and that meant movement. He was almost looking forward to it, the waiting was worse than anything.

“Relax, you guys, we’ll see action before dawn. I know it, I can feel it in my cock.” He grabbed his crotch for emphasis and the others laughed, the tension briefly dissipating then crystallized as thickly as before. Somewhere nearby an owl hooted, startling a couple of the soldiers who, after realizing it was a false alarm, laughed again. Juan slipped off his helmet and lifted his balaclava to scratch his scalp, which was itchy from days of dust and filth. A sharp blow knocked him against the wall and something flashed past his face and out over the trench beyond. He crouched, dazed.

“What was that?” Dario asked. “White shrapnel?”

“From what? There was no explosion,” Carlos piped up as he knelt beside Juan. “You okay, my friend?”

Juan reached up to the back of his neck: it felt like a bullet graze, he was bleeding slightly.

“I’ll live.”

“Maybe it was an angel.”

“Sure, where I come from angels don’t have fucking teeth. You’re fucking crazy.”

“We’re all fucking crazy to be in this war.”

“Hey, maybe I’ll just catch some sleep—you guys can take over for an hour or so. Wake me when the marines come.”

“Sure, Mr. Smart-arse.”

Juan curled up, pulled his parka hood over his head, and fell instantly asleep.