Between Here and the Horizon(40)

Fifteen minutes later, my shirt pulled up over my mouth to filter out the dust as I ran, the private led me to Ronan. He was sitting up, back leaned against the skeleton of a burned-out Jeep, and his face was splattered with blood. Hands, too. Uniform soaked. It was everywhere. He looked like some crazed serial killer, drunk from the high of the kill.

I sank down into a crouch in front of him, placing my hands on his shoulders. “Jesus, man. You’re a mess.” I tried to smile, but it felt wrong, like I was probably grimacing instead.

Somewhere, someone said, “Holy shit. I heard he had a twin, but that shit is bonafide crazy.”

Ronan blinked; his eyelashes were clumped, dried blood caking them together. “Hey,” he said. He was dazed, his pupils unfocused. “Heard you were out tonight, too.”

“Yeah, man. Doing clearance. No drama on our end. What’s the deal with you, though? You taking a moment to get your shit together?” I laughed, trying to make light of the fact that it looked like Ronan was seriously f*cked up.

“Yeah. Yeah, I just need a minute is all. You think…you think you could…?” Glancing around, he gestured toward his men.

“Of course. Of course. You stay here, okay. I’ll be right back.”

I rallied his guys quickly, ordering them back to base with the few prisoners who remained alive. None of them seemed like they wanted to leave Ronan, but they did as they were told, anyway. We weren’t alone. There was still plenty of military personnel knocking around, sifting through the rubble, looking for survivors or escaped fighters. It was safe for the moment, or as safe as Afghanistan ever got, anyway.

“Ronan? Ronan, what happened, man?” I sat down next to my brother, talking quietly. His eyelids flickered, but he kept staring straight ahead, refusing to look at me.

“There was a man,” he said slowly. “A man. He was trying to take a weapon from one of the dead bodies over there,” he said, pointing. It was hard to see the bodies he was talking about amongst all of the debris on the ground, but I nodded. “And I was here,” he continued. “There was so much smoke in the air. I couldn’t see really well, but I took my gun, and I aimed and fired. I missed twice. He had enough time to free the weapon he was trying to take, and he started firing at me. Screaming. He was screaming so loud. I could hear him, over the other gunfire and everyone else yelling and shouting. This…this high-pitched wailing sound. It was awful. I fired again. And again. And again. Eventually he went down. The wailing didn’t stop, though. He was still, wasn’t moving. I was sure he was dead, but the crying just wouldn’t stop. And then the dust cleared a little, and I saw…I saw. He wasn’t a man. He was a woman. And the crying…”

He trailed off, his words sounding thick and distorted in his throat. A tear welled up and fell, streaking down his face, cutting a pathway through the blood and dirt and sweat that stained his skin. “The wailing finally stopped. A long, long time, though. It carried on for a long time, Sully.”

“It’s okay, man. It’s okay.” I threw an arm around him and pulled him into me, feeling sick. Ronan fought to breathe, panting in short, sharp, shallow blasts that made his ribcage rise and fall erratically.

“You have to go. You have to see,” he said. “You have to find out for me.”

“No, Ronan. Let’s just get you back to base, okay? Get you washed and some caffeine inside you. I think Daniels has some whiskey stashed—”

“Fuck, man, just go and see!” Ronan bucked against me, trying to get to his feet. There was a wild, horrific look in his eye that said he’d go over there and look himself if only he could figure out how to stand up.

“All right. All right.” I pushed him back, forcing him to sit. “All right. I’ll go, I promise.”

The walk over to the woman Ronan had shot was the longest walk of my life. They say time stretched in situations like this, and it really did. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to confirm what Ronan suspected. When I made it to the foot of the stairwell across the other side of the street, a body lay prone on the ground, and I immediately saw the long, messy braid of hair sticking out of the material wrapped around the head. The hands, still gripping hold of the rifle, were small and delicately cut, though incredibly dirty, muck shored up in crescents under the nails.

Stooping, I ripped the Band-Aid off quickly and rolled the body over.

There, just as Ronan expected, was the baby.

Maybe a year old. He’d lost one of his socks, though somehow retained the other. White, dirty, with Converse printed along the sole. I didn’t even know Converse made socks that small. His skin was pale, his tiny hands clenched into fists. His eyes—pale blue. Striking. Unusual—were open. Through his left shoulder, a neat hole the size of a dime had ripped through his little t-shirt, and a stream of now black blood had poured free, staining the concrete beneath him.

“Is it dead?” Ronan yelled. “Is…is the baby dead?”

God. How to tell him? I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I closed the baby’s eyes.

Gritting my teeth, I stood up, turned around, and walked away. “There was no baby, Ro. It’s just a guy. Just a guy with long hair, that’s all.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN





Conundrum