Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(84)

“Can’t do it,” Frangie says as she sprinkles sulfa powder on the wound. “That doesn’t even rate stitches.”

“I coulda been killed.”

“And if you had been, you’d be going home.” She’s pleased with the steadiness of her voice, she likes the toughness of it. And she’s coping, that’s the important thing, she’s coping.

Despite the hammering they’ve taken there’s only three deaths: the PFC, the headless man, and Doon Acey. He was the only one she knew in the outfit, the only one she could talk to.

If I were a real doctor, maybe . . .

After doing all she can for the urgent cases she sets up an examination office of sorts, an upturned ammo crate for a chair, another one for her patients. Three men and one woman line up, all with minor injuries.

Frangie is in charge. She’s the doc, at least for this part of the battalion.

All around her there is frantic activity as soldiers run a length of chain to a surviving truck and haul an overturned howitzer upright. The battery must be moved if they are to avoid another barrage.

“Sergeant Acey.” It’s the young lieutenant. His pale skin is covered with dust, so even in firelight he looks more gray than white. “There was nothing you could do for him?”

She is busy picking at a stubborn roll of medical tape. “No, sir. It was . . . Um.” She grabs the tape end and pulls. “It was . . . It was bad.”

“He was a good soldier.” The dust on Lieutenant Penche’s face reveals the track of a tear. He is shaken up.

He’s not much older than I am.

“Yes, sir,” she says. “I knew him. I know his folks. I can write them.”

He shakes his head. “No, I’ll write them. And the others. I mean, of course you can, but I must. It’s my duty.”

“That’s the captain’s job, isn’t it, sir?”

“The captain . . . Well, he’s not . . . I mean, with colored troops and how . . .” Lieutenant Penche realizes he’s said too much and finishes lamely by saying, “Let’s both write to his folks, you and me, Doc.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there anything you need here?” He doesn’t seem to want to leave.

“Water, sir, if there is any.”

He’s relieved to be given something to do. “I’ll do what I can.”

She watches him walk away. He looks lost, somehow. He’s swallowed up in the rush of soldiers and vehicles, and Frangie figures that’s it, he’s done what he thought he had to do and having discharged his duty she’ll hear no more from him. But within ten minutes a five-gallon can of awful-tasting but satisfyingly wet water is delivered.

It takes the battalion an hour and a half before they can relocate and begin the job of doing unto others what’s been done to them, and by then half a dozen soldiers have disappeared, melting into shadows and heading toward the rear.

Frangie has seen the insides of her hometown friend. When she writes his parents, she will not mention that. And she will try to forget it.

Then, as if she is receiving a vision, a glimpse ahead in time, like a newsreel of her future, Frangie knows that blood and bone, spasms and shrieks, terrible, terrible things will be her future so long as she is in this war.

She looks longingly back down the road, back toward safety, and thinks, Let them court-martial me. Let them lock me up and call me a coward. I don’t care. I can’t do this.

I can’t.

Dear God in heaven, you know I can’t.





25

RIO RICHLIN—A BEACH NEAR SOUSSE, TUNISIA, NORTH AFRICA

“Off the beach, off the beach! Come on!”

The person yelling sounds authoritative, and Rio responds, moves, moves, anything to get away from the scene of Kerwin Cassel’s death, from the salty smell of his blood, from the memory of a beating heart come to full rest.

It’s a panic reaction, a visceral need to get away, to put distance between herself and death, and it almost gets her killed. She stands up and instantly earns a shout of, “Stay low, you stupid bugger!” in a British accent. It’s Jack. “Sorry, Rio, didn’t mean—” His unnecessary apology stops abruptly when they hear shouts and gunfire and then . . .

Crump!

Crump!

Two grenades go off in rapid succession, and the machine gun falls silent. Shots. Slow, aimed, deliberate. Someone is finishing off whoever the grenades didn’t kill. Shooting bullets into human beings.

Liefer yells something about getting the wounded onto the boats, but most of the boats are gone already, racing away to safety in deeper water.

What will they do with Cassel? He has to go home. He has to go home.

A coal miner and his haggard wife, that’s what Rio pictures. Pictures them getting the telegram all the way up in the steep, green hills of West Virginia.

“Second Squad, over here!” Sergeant Cole, somewhere in the darkness ahead, for once not mumbling.

Rio can’t see where “over here” is, but she runs toward the sound of his voice, runs hunched over until she plows into a seated soldier and hits the sand face-first.

“What the hell?” Cat’s voice.

“Sorry, Preeling.”

“Jeez, Richlin, you kneed me in the neck.”

“I said sorry.”