Dastardly Bastard(25)

Mark remembered his camera. The Nikon had a built-in flash. He could use it to see. If there was anything to see. He reached up to his chest. No camera.

“Damn it!”

He took a step forward, testing the ground under his feet. It felt spongy, with some give, and not as solid as he had thought. Mark felt himself moving forward, an unseen presence at his back, pushing him along. He pushed against it, but his strength was gone.

“Mr. Simmons.” The voice was female, thick, and hoarse.

“Who’s there?”

“Follow my voice.”

The hand at his back forced him to advance. Ahead, through the darkness, a funnel of light spread, growing wider. The sheer brilliance of the spectrum caused Mark to snap his eyes closed. He felt as if he were looking into the sun. When the light began to bleed through his eyelids, he countered by placing a palm over each eye. From around the edges of his hands, his vision showed red. His eyes pulsed with outward pressure, seeming to swell until Mark was certain they would pop from his head, spilling out onto the ground. Cheeks burning, breath hitching, Mark realized he was sweating profusely.

Wherever he was, it was damn hot. He imagined a tractor beam dragging him along on a collision course with the sun.

The glow began to fade, dialing down to a dimmer, more manageable brightness. Mark dropped his hands, and they came away slick with perspiration. Looking around, he found himself in a place from his past.

He was in a morgue.

Mark knew that place all too well. Stone-gray tarp walls rose to a vaulted ceiling. A single pole jutted from the middle of the ground, holding the roof up at its apex. Along both walls were beige body bags laying atop military-issue gurneys. Mark remembered being told, months prior, that those storage bags of the recently departed were rarely ever black anymore, that a pile of black sitting against a wall of sand stood out too much.

Men and women dressed in desert camouflage pushed bodies in and out of the tent. Sullen faces mixed with smiling mugs reminded Mark of the dichotomy of war. How one person dealt with the dead and dying wasn’t always how the rest of the world would react. He heard, incredulously, a jarhead telling a knock-knock joke in one corner of the tent.

“Orange you glad I didn’t see your banana!” The private leaned forward and slapped his knee.

“Whatever,” his buddy said. “You screwed the pooch on that one, Jerry.”

The air was scorching. Mark believed his lungs were at risk of searing closed with every breath. Aromas of burnt flesh and singed hair permeated the entire tent. He’d not been able to take it the first time he had been there, and that hadn’t changed. He tried to cough, but only managed to wheeze.

Gunfire rose in the distance, sounding like popcorn in a microwave. Mark flinched every time the sound came. He knew young men and women were out there, only miles away, fighting for their lives, trying to free a country that had no want, or need, to be saved.

A young man in fatigues burst through the flap at the opposite end of the tent. Mark recognized him. The last time Mark had seen him, the private had not been in one piece.

“Contact!” His eyes were wide, crazed. “We got contact!”

Jerry and his buddy, both far too happy to be running off to their deaths, abandoned the gurney they had been pushing to join the excited private. The three of them disappeared, grunting like gorillas.

“Mr. Simmons.” The woman’s voice returned. Her words were cold in Mark’s ears, as if she were blowing in them from both sides.

Mark was shoved forward to the gurney the two men had been pushing. He didn’t want to go. He pushed back against the hand in the middle of his back, but the presence returned with even greater force. It pushed him along as if he weighed next to nothing. Whatever it was, it was mighty strong. And damn impatient. As he approached the pale brown body bag, Mark looked away, not wanting to see. He knew what was in there and begged not to be shown.

Inch by inch, the zipper began to open. Mark could hear the slow zooooooot of the metal as it parted. The presence at his back moved to his head. He was made to look.

The woman’s name was Annabelle Heinemann. She had been nineteen when she died. While she was alive, Mark had thought her a beautiful young woman. He’d taken pictures, interviewing her on what she thought about George W.’s war on terror and her stay in Baghdad. Annabelle had been pleasant and helpful, always answering with a smile. Life poured from her. She’d had that aura of immortality many people her age held. Looking in her eyes, Mark knew she thought she would be the first one to live forever.

Annabelle was ready to serve, to fight at any cost. That cost lay before him in the open body bag.

A sniper’s round, deadly accurate, had removed the entire left side of Annabelle’s pretty face. The .50 caliber munition, more than likely from a Barrett, had not been merciful on her soft features. Most of her brain was exposed, or what was left of it. Her left eye and ear had been blown completely off. Remnants of shoulder-length brown hair, stiff with blood, were splayed behind her head. She looked, oddly enough, like those portraits of the Virgin Mary with head ablaze in dazzling, fiery light. The right side was pocked with smaller holes, no doubt from the bullet shattering inside her skull and finding its way back out into the world. Mark had seen enough shrapnel and bullet wounds to know how those things worked. She looked so peaceful lying there, her one good eye closed. Mark imagined she was just sleeping. He ignored the gore, focused on the good.