Page 33

But what if we die ?

What if there’s no time left?

***

On a sandy, deserted street in what felt like the middle of nowhere, our platoon took position. I was on the roof of an abandoned building with Sid while the other soldiers in my section, including Lizzie, were on the ground with the rest.

From where I crouched, setting up my equipment, I could see Lizzie patrolling the street.

She held her gun tight to her chest, aware of her surroundings.

I wasn’t her commanding officer, but I watched anyway.

I watched them all as best as I could, like a mother hen keeping an eye on all of her baby chicks.

I removed my sunglasses to wipe my brow when movement from the street below caught my eye.

A bouncing ball came into view. A boy ran down the street, chasing after it. Lizzie said something to him, a kind smile on her face. He didn’t seem to reply, but grinned at her, then kept running.

“So, Serg, about what I was saying back in the truck,” Sid said, crouched beside me, binoculars in hand. “I’m—”

“Don’t worry about it, Corporal,” I muttered, still feeling guilty.

“Nah, man, I was out of line. I’m—"

“Sergeant Tailor,” the lieutenant spoke through the walkie-talkie, his voice brusque. “Are you in position?”

I took my place behind my rifle, peering through the scope. “Yes, sir. I’m in position,” I answered .

“I want your eyes on the rooftops, Tailor. Let us worry about what’s happening down here.”

“Yes, sir.”

I felt the sting of being reprimanded by a superior. He must’ve seen me focused on Lizzie and not on setting up—never mind that I could get my shit together with my eyes closed at this point. Still, I swallowed my pride and kept it from eating at me.

“So, um …” Sid cleared his throat. “Anyway, uh … I was thinking … I mean, I was wondering if, uh …”

“Just say what you wanna say, Sprague,” I grumbled, sparing a quick glance at him.

He was beside me, moving slowly with his binoculars, scanning the rooftops for enemy snipers.

“All of this talk about love and shit, I was thinking … I mean … I wanted to ask Grace—"

“Grace?” I interrupted, startled. “Grace who? My sister ?”

He moved carefully. He had great attention to detail, never letting a single movement go unnoticed, making him the perfect spotter. I watched, too, of course, but not as meticulously to avoid visual fatigue.

“Yeah,” he replied absentmindedly. “I think I, uh … I think I might be in love with her.”

What?

The back of my neck prickled with anger and irritation, and I was ready to pummel the shit out of him. He had chosen this moment to bring this up, when I was distracted by the mission.

What an asshole .

I blew out a deep breath, expelling my anger and peering through the rifle’s lens. “I’m not talking about this right now, Corporal,” I muttered through gritted teeth.

“That’s why I’ve been talking about all this love shit, man. Honestly, I wanted to get your—"

“ Corporal ,” I interrupted harshly, taking a fraction of a second to glare at him. “Not. Now.”

He never took his eyes from his binoculars. “Whatever you say, Sergeant.”

I forced the thought of my second best friend in life dating my other sister out of my head—God, what the hell were the chances?

I eyed the neighboring rooftops and saw nothing. There was nobody around. My jaw shifted from side to side, and I itched to swing my gaze downward to the troops on the ground, my intuition nagging relentlessly. I was wasting my time up here. Something was going to happen—I could feel it—and I—

“Tailor, look. The woman with the baby.”

“Where?”

“Heading south down the road.”

Disobeying the orders given by my supervising officer, I swung my attention downward, following Sid’s line of sight, and saw her immediately.

A beautiful young woman— very young—dressed in long, flowing clothes.

A bundle of cloth was in her arms, a swaddled baby perhaps.

But something was off about the way she carried it. Sloppy. Haphazard.

Sid was already following my train of thought as he spoke into the walkie. “Lieutenant, eyes on the woman heading south. Coming straight toward you. ”

The speaker crackled, and the lieutenant spoke. “What did I say about keeping eyes off the ground? Sergeant, you let us worry about what’s happening down here. Do you hear me? Don’t forget your place.”

I ignored his warning and watched as the woman walked, quickening her pace as she approached. “Sir, I mean this with the utmost respect—"

“ Sergeant !”

Sid stiffened at my side. “Max,” he said with warning.

The woman dropped the bundle from her arms. She uncovered the assault rifle she had concealed beneath the blanket and aimed the gun at Lizzie.

“Max, are you seeing this? Max .”

Fuck, fuck, fuck .

I swung my rifle toward the woman and readied my finger on the trigger, but I was too slow. I was the fastest shot in our base, and I was too fucking slow .

In the blink of an eye, before anyone on the ground could react, my friend was pumped full of bullets, and one second later, I fired a single round directly between the woman’s eyes.

My heart pounded in my eardrums as I ripped my sunglasses off and threw them on the roof, covering my eyes with the gloved palm of my hand.

No, no, no . Grief flooded my heart. God , Lizzie … her husband, her kids …

There wasn’t more time.

“Fucking hell,” Sid groaned, his voice tight with emotion. “God, Lizzie. Fuck. ”

“Yeah,” I croaked, dropping my hand to squint toward her lifeless body on the ground, beside the crumpled body of her killer.

How quickly it could all change in just the faintest sliver of time. Two lives, snuffed out, just like that.

I thought about Dumass and his widow. Their daughters. How were they now? Who would tell Lizzie’s husband? Would anyone personally deliver her tags to him?

I heard someone say through the walkie, “All clear.”

An unsettling churned in my gut. Again, intuition raised the hair on the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right. That couldn’t be it.

I looked at Sid, who was already packing his ruck. He glanced at me, noticed I hadn’t started breaking down my gear.

“What?” he asked, his voice holding an edge that only came from losing one of our own.

I poked my tongue at the inside of my cheek and shook my head. “I dunno. I have a bad feeling.”

“Yeah, well, Lizzie’s fucking dead.”

His grief had turned quickly to anger. I couldn’t blame him for being mad. So was I. But Lizzie was already gone. There was a greater threat somewhere. Something was wrong. But my troop was leaving, and I had to follow.

I packed up, and Sid and I took the stairs together, watching each other’s back. We met with the rest of the platoon at the trucks and loaded in. This time, for maybe the first time ever, we rode separately, and I didn’t stop to consider that nobody would be there to watch Sid’s back.

I needed to have a word with the lieutenant .

But, God, how quickly it would all change …

“Don’t start with me, Tailor,” he grumbled the moment I took my seat.

“You would all be dead right now if it wasn’t for me,” I said, raising my voice above the rumble of the engine. “ Lizzie is dead because of you .”

I knew better than to speak to my superior this way, but fuck that.

The lieutenant slowly turned to glare at me.

His eyes narrowed; his nostrils flared. “I will pretend you didn’t just talk to me like that, Sergeant.

We all lost a friend; I’ll let it slide.

But if you say one more thing out of line, I will make you sorry you opened your fat fucking mouth. Do you understand me?”

“You—"

“One more word, Tailor, and I’ll have you scrubbing my toilet with your fucking toothbrush for the next week! You better think—"

The ground shook, and the sky lit with an explosion. It took a moment to process what was happening as I watched the truck ahead of us fly off the road. I held fast to the grab bar beside me as the soldier behind the wheel of our truck came to a screeching halt yards away.

“ Sid ,” I whispered, my voice high-pitched and strained.

He was in that truck. Oh God . They must’ve hit an IED. He was in that fucking truck.

I have to go to him.

I jumped out of the truck as the lieutenant screamed, “What are you doing, Tailor?! Get back in this truck! Do you hear me?! ”

Logic told me to stay. Logic told me to listen to him, to obey his order. But a seven-nation army couldn’t hold me back from finding my best friend and seeing if he was alive. If he wasn’t, there was nothing more I could do for him, but if he was …

“Sid!” I shouted as I neared the smoking truck, gun held high. “Sidney!”

As I came closer, I could see the soldier who had been behind the wheel was dead, impaled by a piece of shrapnel.

His eyes open, unseeing. The soldier beside him had suffered a similar fate.

There was nothing I could do for those men.

But a couple of groans came from inside the open back seat, and a glimmer of hope was alight in my heart as I saw the two privates I hardly knew—alive.

They were injured, bleeding from cuts to the head and clutching broken limbs.

Without a second thought, I assisted them both in getting out. When they swore they could manage to get to the others themselves, I continued in my search of Sid.

I didn’t have to look for long.

“Serg …” His whisper was coupled by moans of agony, coming from beside the vehicle.

“Sid, I hear you, buddy. I’m coming,” I said, rounding the truck, following his voice, and then I saw him. “Oh God. No. Fuck. Sid … fuck !”

A quick assessment was all I needed to see he’d been thrown from the truck during the explosion, only for it to land on top of him, pinning his leg beneath one of its tires.

There was blood everywhere. Dread and despair washed over me, coalescing in the pit of my gut as I dropped my rifle to the ground and fell to my knees beside him, scrambling to reach his side.

He was breathing rapidly, his skin pale and clammy.

His wide, tear-filled eyes met mine as he lifted his head, attempting to look down over his broken body. “My leg, Max. Oh my fucking God, my leg. Can you see it?”

“I see it, man,” was all I could say.

“Holy fuck. What … what the fuck am I going to do? I-I’m gonna die here.” The tears started to flow quickly from his eyes as he laid his head back against the rocky ground. “Oh Jesus, Max. I don’t wanna die. I-I-I don’t wanna fucking die.”

I knelt over him and pressed my hands to his cheeks, and my eyes bored right through his. “You are not fucking dying in this hellhole. Do you hear me? You are not fucking dying .”

He squeezed his eyes shut, sobbing and struggling to catch his breath, and I slapped my palm against his cheek.

“Look at me, Sid!”

Like a good soldier, he listened and pried his eyes open. They rolled in his sockets for a moment, and his lids fluttered, but he focused on me. That was the important thing.

“You are not going to die. You’re getting the fuck out of here, all right?”

“I don’t know, man,” he whispered through his tears. “I-I think … I think I might be d-dying.”

“No, you’re not!” I shouted through my own desperation for him to live. “You’re not dying. You’re gonna go home, Sid. You are. You’re gonna go home, and you’re gonna ask Grace out on a real, honest-to-God date.”

“W-what?” he croaked around a sob, his eyes clouding with confusion.

“You said you love her, right?”

He nodded, the movement unsteady. “Y-yeah. I-I-I-I do. I f-f-fuckin’ do.”

“Then that’s what you’re gonna do. You’re getting the fuck out of here, you’re gonna go home, and you’re gonna do exactly what I was never able to do. You’re not fucking dying here, and you’re gonna ask her out. And that’s a fucking order. You got it, Corporal?”

Sid nodded again, his breathing less erratic, as if determination had willed his lungs to steady. “Y-yes.”

“Yes what?” I asked, lighting a fire under his ass as much as my own.

He gritted his teeth, furrowed his brow, and mustered as strong of a, “Yes, Sergeant,” as he could.

“All right,” I said, giving his cheek another pat before sitting back on my heels and surveying the area. “So, now, we just gotta—"

BOOM!

A blinding pain pierced through my skull as I fell back away from Sid, landing on my side with a thud . I clapped my hands over my ears, praying the ringing would stop as I turned my head, only to find that the truck I’d ridden in was now on its side, a cloud of dust billowing around it.

Another IED.

They’re everywhere.

Are we surrounded ?

Keeping low, with the ringing in my ears persisting, I rolled to my stomach and crawled toward the truck pinning Sid to the ground.

I reached inside, searching for a walkie to call base for help, and when I found one, I provided my name and location and begged whoever was listening for help …

but I didn’t get any response. Nobody said a damn thing.

In fact, apart from the ringing that was only starting to subside, I heard absolutely nothing at all.

I shouted the information again, praying someone was on the other end.

When I glanced at Sid, I saw his lips moving.

He was talking … no, he was yelling . Yelling at me .

His eyes were wide and worried, maybe even a little confused, as spittle flew from his mouth, his neck strained and corded as he shouted.

God, he looked so scared . And the longer I stared at him and the panic in his eyes, the more I began to feel it too.

Something was wrong. Not just with him, but with me .

And still, I heard … nothing.