Survivalist

© Kevin Brown

First published in Murky Depths #7

Smith, Jeffrey G. General Infantry. Grunt. Front Liner. Short-Timer. Mean Green Killing Marine, Ooh Aah! I'm with 3 rd Platoon Alpha Team. Or maybe it's Charlie Company 1 st Battalion, 20 th Infantry Regiment. There's been so many it's hard to keep straight.

Platoon's at base camp, around a fire that pops like bones in the desert air. Men's faces tiger-striped in shadow, they're every face of every soldier of every war ever fought. Shell-shocked and battle-rocked. Tired, hungry. Ready to die or go home.

Next to me, Rodriguez says, “Pinche frio.” He cups his hands to his mouth and blows. Slips them under his armpits. Just a kid. Getting a diploma, then getting orders. Same acne on his forehead he had at Prom.

I sip from my canteen. Lick the trickle from my chin before anyone sees.

Sergeant Bailey's crouched above a map spread lumpy over the sand. He runs his finger over satellite imagery of wracked streets and bullet-torn buildings. I remember sitting in groups like this in the wilds of Virginia , studying hand-drawn maps made by Union scouts. Or being huddled around stick lines in the snow during the Campaign of 1812.

Bailey points and says, “We'll enter here at sun-up.” A few men nod. A couple yawn. Rodriguez rubs his hands together and jams them between his thighs. “Expect heavy resistance,” Bailey says, “and do not allow civilians to approach.” His finger tapping a crater into the map, into the area most of these men will die tomorrow, he says, “Assume they're armed with explosives.”

I think of the blood, and my jaw squares off and pops. My palate hurts.

“Pinche frio,” Rodriguez says, and starts to rock.

***

In my sleep, nightmares timeline by. Locations and people, languages and weapons change, but the hunger's constant. Like war itself, needing blood to quench the thirst. There's the child's head wound I had to drink from during the Son My Massacre at My Lai . And me as a Nazi soldier at Auschwitz , looking like a death camp prisoner because I could not bring myself to feed off the slaughtered. There's the First Crusade, in the Siege of Maarat, watching cannibalism on a scale even I couldn't imagine. And my hands trembling in the belly of the Trojan Horse at Troy , my stomach cavity cramping…

***

With the land rolling toward the sun, we move in and along where the Sergeant's finger had slid over the map. Fanning out in formation. Rodriguez behind me, repeating the Lord's Prayer, while I shake and convulse.

Breaths and silence.

I know it's coming.

Before any sound, flicks of dust kick up in a spray around us. Men drop for cover. Screaming. Cries of pain. The sounds of bullets ricocheting off brick. Firing back, a few double over. Rodriguez turns to run and I scream, “ No! ” Yell, “ Rodriguez, stop! ” But a shot catches him in the throat. I grab his collar, trying to drag him out of the line of fire, and there's an explosion in my face. The sounds go muffled, and my features feel like tousled hair.

This has happened before—arrows through the guts. Doused in steaming water from wall tops. Split in half through seams in chainmail. You never get used to it.

As quick as it came apart, my skull begins to reform. Bones reattach. Ligaments merge. Tissue fibers latch and hold. Skin gels to skin in purple welts that centipede across my face and get smaller, smaller, then gone.

I sit up. Look around. No one's watching.

I grab Rodriguez and drag him around a hollowed out building. Hold him in my lap. His life, my life, draining out of him.

“Jesus, Rodriguez,” I say, and think: Pinche frio.

Cupping my hands, I slurp from the wound. Unscrew my canteen cap. Fill it to the brim.

To need what I need to live, war is perfect. War gives me permission. It's a contradiction, where men are captured for freedom. Where they die for life. It's bloodlust greater than mine. And it comes every few years without exception.

Mother Earth's menstrual cycle.

I stand and rejoin the battle. I am what I am—do what I have to. Like the Donner Party. The lion that eats its own. It's not monstrous. Not murder. It's survival. Just survival.

_____________________

I recently won the Permafrost Literary Journal's Midnight Sun Fiction Contest, the Touchstone Fiction Competition, and placed third in the Cadenza Fiction Contest.  I was nominated for a 2007 Journey Award, and have published in GUD, Space & Time, Murky Depths, Twisted Tongue, Morpheus Tales, Horror Express, sub-TERRAIN, Rosebud, and Underground Voices.