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He hits the ground before the cacophony of the deafening explosion reaches his ears, and before his brain has a chance to process what just happened, it blanks out and his body shuts down and he knows no more.
…
By the time he regains consciousness, his fingers twitching to find purchase, something, anything to ground him, there’s no longer asphalt beneath them. Instead of the abrasive yet smooth texture of the paved parking lot, he feels gravel, dead grass, and rocks. And although his brain has yet to function properly again, he knows there’s something so, so wrong with that.
Then it clicks.
He’s no longer in Chicago. He’s back in Afghanistan.
No…that can’t be right.
Confused and disoriented, he tries to open his eyes, but his eyelids are leaden, and it feels like they are glued together with clumps of sticky mud. He tries again, and this time they open just a slit, but he still can’t see a thing. Everything is grainy and blurry, and he can barely distinguish between shadow and light. Dust clings to his lashes, and when he blinks the grains of sand away, they irritate his retinas.
At last, he can make out vague silhouettes and faint colors of his surroundings. But they are not what he expects…hopes to see. There’s no skyline of high-rise buildings and there’s none of the blue and grey and white that paints his hometown either. In fact, there are no buildings here at all. Everything is tinged in an alarming yellow and orange and brown, with billows of black smoke and ash everywhere.
Whatever tiny spark of hope he clung to moments ago goes out with a flash of red in the horizon as another explosion shakes the ground. The flash blinds him and sends shards of pain through his skull and before he knows it, he succumbs into blissful darkness once more.
…
He wakes to a cloud of gravel and earth raining down on his face and makes the mistake of inhaling a good amount of it. Violent dry hacks wrack his frame, screeching pain erupting all over him and unable to catch his breath, he loses his battle with consciousness before he can even open his eyes.
…
When he comes to, someone drags him through dried mud.
Thorns of dead bushes slice his skin and sharp rocks of the mountain steppe dig into his arms and legs and back and butt, dig into open wounds and grates on broken bones, but it barely registers because every inch of him feels like it’s on fire anyway.
He tries to open his eyes again, just a crack, but the sky is way too bright, the midday sun piercing his skull, and the movement makes him dizzy and nauseous. So he squeezes them shut and swallows the bile clambering up his esophagus because he doesn’t want to choke on his own vomit. He tries to concentrate on the ground beneath him, though he doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse. The rough handling jostles his body, jostles him closer and closer to the precipice of either puking or passing out again.
The decision is made for him, when his shoulder blade bumps into something particularly sharp, setting his entire back ablaze with an agony that overrides everything he’s ever felt before, and before he knows it, he falls off the ledge into that pitch-black hole of nothingness once more.
…
“Son of a bitch.”
The parking lot is a field of destruction, debris littering the asphalt and car alarms blaring, and what used to be the cartel truck Upton and Halstead approached just moments ago is no more than a flaming carcass surrounded by thick billows of smoke.
“Hailey! Jay!” he calls out, scanning the area for his coworkers, but it’s hard to see through the dense fog. A broken side mirror drops from the sky, clattering onto the asphalt a few feet in front of him, the metal frame and glass splintering into pieces. It’s the only answer he receives; other than that: silence.
It worries him more than he likes to admit, because he doesn’t know if the two detectives were anywhere within the blast radius, but he knows they couldn’t have gotten very far in the short amount of time that passed since Voight gave the orders to move in. Then again, he was busy dodging bullets and shooting the other guys, so maybe his sense of time is a little off.
“Jay? Hailey? Are you guys okay? Call out if you can hear me!”
Again silence.
Dread slowly building, he fingers the button on the side of his phone to open the communication line to the rest of the team, trying to remain calm and rational as he delivers the news.
“Boss, this was a trap. The truck was rigged.”
He scans the area again, hoping to spot his friends as the dust slowly settles, but the smoke still obscures most of his view.
“I have no eyes or ears on Hailey or Jay. Last I saw them they were approaching the truck and the suspect. I don’t know how close they were to the explosion. Gonna check the perimeter now.”
With that he pushes himself up and makes his way towards the skeleton of the burnt-out vehicle where he’d last seen Upton’s ocher-colored jacket. He parkours through fallen debris and overturned shopping carts, stopping just long enough to help an innocent customer up off the asphalt and give him a quick once-over before sending him off to seek shelter in the mall, then pushes forward cautiously because there’s still another offender on the loose who might just be waiting to get the drop on him.
The closer he gets, the thicker the smoke and the more extensive the destruction, and it feels a bit like stepping into a battlefield.
Halfway to the cartel truck, well-worn boots and a dusty black feathered jacket catch his eye, and it takes all but a second for him to recognize them. When his eyes travel the length of the unmoving form, he spots the all too familiar shock of military-style cropped brown hair that belongs to none other than–
“Jay! Shit, Jay, can you hear me?”
There’s no response, not even a twitch of a muscle, not that he expected one but…
“Fuck.”
Swearing stirs him from his pain-induced slumber, yelling pulls him back to semi-awareness, the noise jarring his pounding head. The rumbling bass voice sounds familiar, an awful lot like Adam. Brazen yet loyal-to-a-fault Adam.
His insides twist painfully because what in the hell is Adam doing here? What is he doing in Afghanistan? Adam’s not a trained soldier. One hell of a cop, sure, but not a soldier and certainly not a ranger. He shouldn’t be here. Why would he be here in this Godforsaken place?
“5021 Ida. I have an officer down, I repeat, officer down. Roll an ambo to my location.”
Over the persistent ringing in his ears, he can’t make out anything that is said, but he senses the urgency beneath the controlled report.
“Crime lab too. There’s been an explosion at my location. Two offenders down, shot by the police. There was a third offender – male Hispanic, black jacket, grey jeans – no sign of him. Looks like he’s in the wind. No idea which direction he ran off to.”
He hopes to God that Adam’s talking to the rescue squad, hopes to God that he’s requesting air extraction from the hot zone because he needs Adam to get out of here, needs Adam to get to safety, needs to know Adam’s safe.
“Jay! Hey, Jay! Can you hear me?”
Yes, yes, he can, but he wishes he wouldn’t. But Adam sounds so close this time, like he’s coming closer, like he’s right there next to him, and he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be here.
“Jay?”
Through the open slits of his eyes, he makes out a blurry silhouette, and he can only assume that it’s Adam dropping down to one knee beside him, hovering over him but not quite touching and although he doesn’t know why he’s immensely grateful for that.
“C’mon, Jay. Open your eyes. Talk to me.”
He tries. Tries to pry his eyes open just a fraction more. And he wants to, wants to open his mouth and tell Adam to leave, to tell him to get the hell out of here, get himself to safety, away from this atrociously hellish place. But his eyelids are too heavy, his vocal cords are paralyzed, and his lips feel sewed shut, not a single muscle in his body capable of fending off the heavy pull of unconsciousness.
“I found Jay… alive but unresponsive. Could be injured or just knocked out cold. Looks like he was pretty close to the explosion. Ambo’s on the way, haven’t found –”
Adam stops talking, and he can feel in the shift in the air that confuses him and makes his nerves tingle. He doesn’t know why until Adam speaks again, his voice no longer calm and collected as the words tumble from his coworker’s lips.
“Hailey! Dammit, Hailey!”
Suddenly, Adam’s shadow vanishes, making him feel oddly bereft of the presence and panicky at the same time. The frantic shouting becomes more and more distant as Adam leaves his side, and maybe it’s that or maybe it’s the blood whirring in his ears but he no longer hears anything the other man is saying.
“5021 Ida, requesting a second ambo stat. I have another officer down. Unconscious, head laceration… I repeat, two officers down. What’s the ETA on the first ambo? I need it here now. I need both ambos here now!”
It’s all white noise to him, fright clutching his heart in a vice grip and tying his insides into knots because Hailey. Hailey is here. Hailey is in Afghanistan too, and it’s bad enough Adam is here, but Hailey… Hailey being here in this hellhole is a million times worse.
He feels sick, his stomach roiling and this time he can’t stop himself from spilling its contents. Puke bubbles up his throat and he lacks the strength to spit it out. It’s trailing out the corner of his mouth and along his cheek instead, dripping and pooling in a puddle on the asphalt beneath him. He can’t bring himself to care that he’s laying in his own vomit, and he’s too out of it to recognize the specks of red mixed in it either. His entire body is consumed by unimaginable flares of agony in his torso that come with the convulsions, and before he knows it, the lights go out again.
…
A row of explosions shakes the ground when he comes back to awareness, the quakes vibrating deep within his bones, sending spikes of debilitating pain through his limps and queasy stomach. Laying as still as possible, he squeezes his eyes shut as he waits for the wave to pass, groaning in misery, trying to block out the ceaseless gunfire as well as the distant howls and screams.
There’s an earth-shattering, soul-splitting yelp right next to him, brought to an abrupt halt, only to be replaced by a strangled wet gurgle, and while he can’t quite comprehend why that might be a bad thing, he knows it is, he just knows it.
It takes for him to force his eyes open to fully understand, and he instantly wishes he had kept them close because there’s no way in hell he will ever unsee the gruesome sight that greets him.
Lifeless eyes stare back at him, wide with a mix of surprise and utter terror. For a second, he thinks this is Hailey because those eyes are the most striking cerulean blue he’s ever seen, the same shade as Hailey’s, and that frightens him, terrifies him more than anything because if Hailey’s dead, then he doesn’t want to live anymore either.
A voiceless whimper leaves his throat at the heart-wrenching thought and it’s then that he leaves Chicago altogether, firmly planted back in the Valley of Death when he realizes the eyes belong to Matthews.
Matthews, the cherry boy who has just been assigned their squad a few weeks prior. Matthews who enlisted the day after his high school graduation, just like he had done too. Matthews who was just shy of nineteen, still so young and so naïve, oh so naïve thinking that by joining the Army he’d be able to do some good in this world. Matthews who in a flash is now gone without ever getting the chance to.
Nineteen. He would have been nineteen in just a few days. But now…now he’s gone.
Unable to tear his eyes away, he stares at Matthew’s mouth still hanging open in a terrified scream that no longer produces any sound because there’s a gaping hole inches below his chin where his vocal cords…where his neck used to be, gallons and gallons of blood gushing out, so much more blood than a human body should hold.
With another horrified gasp, he tries to sit up, tries to scramble backwards. Away, as far away as possible from this literally bloodcurdling sight. But something…someone stops him, rough hands pushing him down into the coarse sand none too gently.
“Stay down, Halstead!”
And he does, obeys, like the good soldier he is. He falls back onto the ground, sharp rocks digging into his spine and his shoulder, both screaming in agony, but he doesn’t feel either because as soon as he’s horizontal again, he comes face to face with the garbled remains of Matthews, and he has no other choice but to watch as the thick red liquid, as life pours out of Matthews’ body.
Once again, his breath hitches, catching in his throat, unable to pass the heavy boulder clogging his airways, and the more he tries to force oxygen past the barrier into his starved, dust-lined lungs, the more he chokes on his abject fear.
For a second or two, he thinks he’s going to die. He’s going to die right here, right now, right next to Matthews.
“Don’t. Don’t look.”
He knows that voice. It’s the same one from moments before, and he wants to listen to it again, wants so desperately to avert his gaze from the horrible sight in front of him. But he can’t bring himself to tear his gaze away, can’t bring himself to shut his eyes either or even so much as blink, not even when they begin to burn and water from the sand and breeze irritating them.
Paralyzed. He’s paralyzed, pulled deeper and deeper into the soulless cerulean blue that becomes darker and darker by the second, looking more and more like endless pits, like black holes, and he’s gravitating straight towards them with no means to escape as time slows down around him.
Just as he wants to give in, calloused hands grab his collar. Flat palms close around his cheeks, cupping his face and firmly steering him away just in time before he passes the event horizon, the point of no return, compelling him to look somewhere, anywhere else.
He finally disengages from Matthews and find Alvarez instead. Alvarez, his commanding officer, whose soft and warm eyes replace the orbs that are so cold, so void of life. Chocolate browns hold his gaze steady, not once blinking, and when his own Maui blues flicker, threaten to wander towards Matthews again, Alvarez tightens his hold on his cheeks and shakes his head in quiet admonition.
“Nuh-uh,” he cautions, his voice gentle, so much gentler than he’s used to from the stern man. “Eyes on me, Halstead. Keep your eyes on me.” He nods obediently, latches onto Alvarez like he is his lifeline, follows the grounding instructions to “breathe, breathe with me,” something he just now realizes he forgot to do for a minute, maybe two.
As his breathing regulates, his vision starts to grey around the edges and his lashes start to flutter, his body giving in to his bone-deep exhaustion.
…
Someone slaps him hard, the sting jolting him back to wakefulness, and with that the grisly image of a very much dead Matthews comes right back too. He tears his eyes open, desperate to escape and erase what he hopes, prays was just a bad dream, but when his head lolls to the side, he knows it wasn’t a dream but cruel reality, and he’s still trapped in this agonizing nightmare.
Matthews is still there, right there in front of him, looking just as dead if not deader than before. His skin is devoid of any color, except for the crimson red still oozing sluggishly, taunting him. His eyes are no longer staring, the cerulean blue no longer visible because someone paid him the respect to close his eyelids, but his mouth is still hanging open in that silent scream and he can almost hear the piercing wail.
It's all it takes for the panic to slam into him again, forcing all the replenished air out of his lungs once more. It almost consumes him, almost swallows him whole, but then Alvarez is in his face again, gaze no longer soft and understanding, but grim and tense and erratic, and he’s speaking way too fast for him to catch any of the words he says.
Alvarez slaps his cheek again, its sting shocking him but snapping him out of his palsy with a sharp gasp and a dry cough that jars his aching chest, but it does the trick.
“Halstead, ya with me?” his commanding officer ensures anyway, and he finds himself nodding even though he’s not sure he is because all of this feels so surreal, like he isn’t supposed to be here, like he should be somewhere else entirely, somewhere far, far away from here.
But he pushes that thought away and nods again, more forceful and confident than before, and it seems like that’s the response Alvarez was waiting for because he says, “good. Because we need to move, now.”
Not trusting his voice yet, he merely jerks his head with another nod and grapples for something he can use to pull himself into a sitting position. For a moment, everything spins, and his muscles feel like jelly, legs stiff and uncooperative as he tries to bring them underneath him. It’s taking too long because his CO is huffing impatiently, and when he meets his eyes, the chocolate browns are no longer calm but wild and irate.
“Now, Halstead.”
Rough hands grab him under the armpits and Alvarez hauls him to his feet before he even has a chance to try on his own again. Vertigo increases as soon as he’s vertical, head swimming and black dots dancing in his vision, and for a moment he thinks he’s going to barf. Every fiber of his body protests in agony, his left side burning like fire from the waist all the way down. He’s trembling. All he wants is to lie back down, but he knows there’s no time to lick his wounds right now.
Sensing his struggle, Alvarez loops an arm around him and nudges him forward, adamant they move, and there’s nothing he can do but let himself be dragged along, trying his best to put one unsteady foot in front of the other.
As he becomes more and more aware of his surroundings, his vision clears and dizziness subsides, adrenaline taking over and making it easier to ignore his ailments and focus on the dilemma they are in.
What used to be the only road in and out of their camp is now Swiss cheesed with craters where IEDs went off or RPGs missed their mark. The sparse vegetation is burnt to the round, the few trees now no more than feeble charcoal stick figures, some of which are still glowing red and spitting embers. Humvees are tipped over, burnt out and dismantled into their components from more explosions, black billows of smoke rising from them, making them ticking time bombs on their own.
It's the masses of corpses which hit him the most.
This is not the first time his squad is taking heavy fire, and it’s not the first time they lose some of their own in battle, but it’s the first time they are ambushed in what’s supposed to be a safe zone, and it’s the first time he sees so many casualties in one place, so many fallen comrades, so many friends, so many brothers in one fell swoop.
Cremated to the bones, bleeding from gaping wounds like Matthews, torn into shreds by shrapnel, discarded like ragdolls, severed legs, severed arms, severed heads, splattered brains, splattered intestines…
Something squishy and slippery under his boot makes him flinch, and he doesn’t need to look to confirm what he stepped on, already having his suspicions, yet he can’t stop himself from looking down anyway. When he sees the gyrate guts entangled around his boot, he heaves violently and can’t stop himself from spilling the meager contents of his own.
Alvarez notices his misery but doesn’t even allow him to draw a single deep breath before he mercilessly tugs on his arm and shoves him forward. There’s no time for pity now, and there’s no time to dwell on those who didn’t make it either, not while they are still taking heavy fire, not if they want to make it out of here alive. Alvarez knows that, and he knows it too, so he keeps moving, just keeps on moving.
They make it all but fifty yards before he sees him.
Maybe a hundred yards away, facedown in the dirt, unmoving. Half-buried under a burning tire not far from the largest pile of corpses he’s seen so far, and it’s so easy to believe he’s one of them, it’s so easy to imagine Matthews’ vacant eyes in the dust-covered face too. It’s so easy, way too easy.
“Mouse.”
The moniker slips past his lips before he realizes it, his voice no more than a heartbroken whisper, throaty and crackling like he had a can of rusty nails for breakfast and washed it down with a gallon of acid. Alvarez must have understood his sob, or maybe he saw Mouse’s body too because this time he slows down, albeit just briefly, granting him this moment to grief, knowing how close the two are.
A bullet whizzes past a little too close for comfort, and Alvarez frantically shakes his head. “Forget about Gerwitz. He’s gone,” he bellows a little too harshly, and without waiting for a response, he tugs on his fatigues, urging him along.
But this time he doesn’t want to move, downright refuses to, resisting with all his might and regained strength.
“Halstead, for Fuck’s sake, move! Move!”
His body remains rigid.
Fear claws at his chest, but it’s a different kind of fear from the paralyzing horror he experienced when he saw Matthews’ lifeless gaze, and it’s a different kind of fear from the shock of stepping on another fallen soldier’s intestines because he knows, deep down he knows he couldn’t have helped either of them, knows that there’s nothing he could have done to save them; they are already dead.
But Mouse… Mouse isn’t dead yet, or at least he doesn’t know if he is. He doesn’t know if he’s dead or unconscious or just pinned down, unable to move or call for help. He doesn’t know and that’s driving him crazy because as long as he doesn’t, he isn’t ready to leave. The mere thought of leaving him behind, potentially leaving him to die a slow and agonizing death, out here on the battlefield or by falling into the hands of the enemy, the thought of not even trying to save him inflates him with unimaginable terror.
And then he sees it: a twitch of Mouse’s hand in the blood-stained sand.
Maybe it’s just his imagination, maybe it’s the glimmer of the midday sun or the heat of the licking flames between his friend and him that’s playing tricks on his mind, but it’s enough for him, enough to throw caution and any common sense to the wind.
He surges forward, struggles against Alvarez’ tight grasp on the front of his fatigues, and the very moment he breaks free from the grip, he’s running. He stumbles and staggers for a moment, but then he finds his footing and sprints with blind determination the hundred or so yards that separate him from Mouse.
“Dammit Halstead! I told you to stand down!”
Alvarez rages behind him, but he doesn’t listen. He blatantly disregards his CO’s orders and the threats of bad conduct charges awaiting him in case they ever make it out of here alive. And although he knows those should scare him, they don’t scare him nearly as much as the thought of making it out without Mouse by his side. He doesn’t think nor care about the consequences because this is Mouse. Mouse, his friend, his best friend, the only friend he ever had, and he isn’t going to leave without him, he isn’t going to let him die, he just isn’t. Chain of command be damned.
Smoke and ash tickle his tongue and burn his lungs, gravel and metal and bones crunch beneath his feet, and more than once shrapnel slices through his pant legs into his shins and calves and occasionally into his arms and palms too when he takes a tumble into the shambles. His left knee throbs as he navigates the uneven terrain, but it barely registers, none of the pain registers.
All he thinks about is Mouse. He needs to get to Mouse, he needs to save him at all costs, even if he dies trying.
It takes him frustratingly long to cross the distance, and by the time he drops onto the unforgiving rocky sand next to his friend, his legs are shaking like aspen leaves. His side screeches in pain and his knee screams an elegy of agony, but he ignores it all, pushes it all aside, his only focus on Mouse, nothing but Mouse.
He doesn’t stop to check for a pulse, just pushes the scorching tire off his friend’s chest with his bare hands, not even feeling it when the flames lick and burn his palms, and when Mouse is finally free of the rubble, he pulls the man into a bone-crushing hug, mumbling a string of heartfelt reassurances into his ear even though he doesn’t yet know if he’s conscious or even alive to hear them.
“I got you Mouse, I got you. I’m not leaving, I’m not leaving you behind, I’m not leaving you, you hear me?”
Gunfire erupts around him, bullets whizzing mere inches from his ear, breaking him from his moment of mourning, and he instinctively throws himself on top of Mouse, blanketing, protecting the defenseless body with his own, and right in this instant he thinks if Mouse isn’t dead yet, this is where he’ll die, where they’ll both die. This is how they’ll go out. And for some reason he’s strangely content with that thought because at least they’ll go out together, at least he'll die alongside his best friend.
The redemptive bullet never comes.
Instead, he hears Alvarez shouting from a distance.
“Move, Halstead, now! I’ll cover you!”
And this time he doesn’t think twice, hell, he doesn’t think at all, simply reacts to the command. Scrambling to his feet, he scoops Mouse’s still frame up off the ground and throws it over his shoulder.
The rough texture of Mouse’s fatigues chafe against an open wound across his shoulder blade and he can’t suppress a yelp of pain, but he doesn’t allow it to slow him down, just ignores it. He ignores the agony in his hip and knee too. He ignores the twinge in his lower back, the growing tightness in his chest, the howl of broken ribs, broken bones, and his hammering skull. He ignores the bullet that clips his right upper arm, tearing a hole through his sleeve and the flesh of his biceps, and he ignores the fragments raining down on him when a hand grenade goes off a little too close to comfort. He ignores it all.
What he doesn’t ignore is the pained groan from his friend. The sound is music to his ears, the most beautiful melody he’s ever heard.
Alive, Mouse is alive.
Relief floods his veins, albeit briefly because they are still under heavy fire, and he can’t afford to get distracted now. He can’t afford to slow down either, but that’s easier said than done because as Mouse becomes more awake, he shifts in his hold and begins to struggle. It throws him off balance, almost makes him lose his footing, almost brings him down on his knees.
“Keep still, Mouse. Don’t move. Just… hold on tight.”
His words are clipped, gritted out between labored breaths, and he’s praying that Mouse is cognizant enough to listen, to understand, to comprehend what he’s saying because traversing the debris and dodging flying bullets with the dead weight of his comrade was challenging enough but traversing it while having to wrestle a delirious ranger putting up heavy resistance is taking a huge toll. Luckily Mouse calms down instantly, fingers digging into his fatigues for better grip, and he sends a silent thankyou heavenwards that his prayers have been heard as he marches on.
When they finally reach Alvarez, the commanding officer is down on the ground, blood oozing from multiple wounds in his right thigh, wounds that he swears weren’t there when he left to save Mouse, wounds that he knows for a fact wouldn’t be there if he’d stayed put.
Guilt makes him stutter but no more than a second; let it consume him later when they are all safe. Instead, he reaches for Alvarez’ arm, pulling him upright and slipping in beside him, nearly crumbling under the additional strain. But he won’t let that stop him because Alvarez had his back up until now, and now it’s time for him to have his too. It’s approximately five-hundred yards to the designated landing zone, and all he needs to do is get them there. He can do that, he knows he can, after all he’s hiked for miles on end under worse conditions, this should be a cake walk.
So, he staggers on, at first passing on as much of his own weight as he’s taking off his CO, with Mouse’s weight distributed between them both. They are each other’s crutches, hobbling further up the hillside. But with every step they take, he’s bearing more and more of the load, and the only reason his strength isn’t waning is because he’s high as a kite on adrenaline.
They are four-hundred yards away from their destination when he hears the distinct chopping sound of the blades the distant. It’s faint, barely audible over the never-ceasing rat-tat of gunfire and blast waves of explosions.
It ignites him with hope, but he isn’t stupid enough to let himself be lulled into a false sense of security. They are so many perils around them, so many things that could still go wrong, and he isn’t going to get the three of them killed now just because he let his guard down.
They are three-hundred yards away when he sees a dark fleck in the sky, just behind the hills, just above the horizon, barely the size of a blackbird.
They are roughly two-hundred yards away when he feels the headwind push against his front, a plume of stirred-up dirt and earth raining down on his face. Pebbles prick his skin, the cloud of dust making it hard to see, and as he tries to shield his eyes, he almost loses his grip on Alvarez, almost topples over as his CO leans heavier on his shoulder.
They are a hundred yards away when the blackbird, now the size of a fully-grown black hawk, touches the ground. He tastes the tears of relief, not caring that the salty liquid isn’t tears but sweat mixed with blood trickling down his face. All he cares about is that they’re going to make it, they’re going to get out of here alive.
They are fifteen yards away when his optimism backfires.
An all too familiar whiz of an RPG makes the hairs at the nape of his neck stand on edge. Less than a second later, the world tilts on its axis, the ground maybe five feet from him ejecting in a geyser of dust and sand and gravel and dry mud, and before he knows it, he’s one with the earth, the edges of his vision greying out.
…
When he comes to mere seconds later, he’s dazed and his ears are ringing, and for a moment he’s unable to tell up from down and left from right. Everything is spinning in a merry-go-round, blurry and distorted as the ride spins off the rail and way too fast. But there’s no time to wait for it to stop, he needs to get up and get moving, and he needs to do it now, for the chopper isn’t going to wait around forever.
He tries to push himself up, but something heavy is holding him down, and it’s only then he realizes he’s half-buried underneath Alvarez and Mouse, neither of them moving. Panic rises again, but he doesn’t allow it to take over, instead shakes Mouse’s shoulder to stir him awake.
Nothing.
Mouse doesn’t move nor does he make a sound.
Unwilling to assume the worst this close to freedom, he pushes against Alvarez praying for a reaction from him, and it’s like someone cranked up the volume from mute all the way up to thunderous because the instant he touches what he believes is his CO’s arm, an ear-splitting scream fills the air, drowning out even the uproarious noise of the chopper.
He flinches at the piercing sound and opens his eyes wide only to stare down a lifeless arm, and it takes a flutter of his lashes or two for him to fully comprehend that it’s Alvarez’ and it’s disembodied, completely severed from the rest of him, torn off just above the elbow, hanging by mere shreds of tattered skin.
Panic returns but he doesn’t allow it to consume him, lets it spur him into motion because there’s still adrenaline pumping through his veins and there’s still fight left in his bones. He wiggles himself free, turning onto his side, but his left isn’t cooperating, so he turns onto his right. His body is on fire, his left leg a mangled, bloody mess, but he can’t even see the state his own body is in, too fixated on fixing that of his comrade.
The first thing he notices as he looks down on his CO are the gallons of red squirting from several wounds and not just from his arm but his entire torso too. There is too much of it all over, too much blood, and he needs it to stop but doesn’t know where to start. He drags himself closer, presses down on one of the large puddles in the middle of Alvarez’ chest as best as he can, at a loss as to how to stop the bleeding of a severed limb.
As he pushes down on the wound, he notices the gushing liquid near Alvarez’ carotid, and he knows if he doesn’t stop the bleeding there, Alvarez is going to die for sure. He scrambles further, aimlessly swatting at the fountain until his flat palm closes around it in a desperate attempt to keep the blood inside. The liquid is warm and sticky and it’s rushing through his fingers way too fast, and he’s slowly losing grip on the slippery skin. But he refuses to give up, just pushes himself closer, releases his hold on the stomach wound to put more pressure on the neck.
Beneath him, the agonizing wails become weaker, weak howls, then no more than wheezy whimpers, and he feels the despair rising because he knows what this means, knows that once the whimpers die off, so does Alvarez.
He dares to look down, finding Alvarez’ chocolate brown eyes locked onto his, and all of sudden, Matthews’ lifeless black holes no longer seems as disturbing because nothing compares to the excruciating agony and terror, he sees in the orbs begging him for eternal release. But offering release is the last thing he wants.
“Stay with me, Alvarez, stay with me,” he begs instead but his own sobs are weak, his own energy waning.
The whimpers stop the moment his hands lose their grip, and he doesn’t have the strength to readjust the hold, yet he tries to anyway, aimlessly grabbling for the oozing arteries, not even realizing there’s no point in even trying. Not anymore.
Shadowy figures approach, boots come into dim focus for a moment only to vanish again as his vision blurs. Faint distorted yells of the exfil team reach his ears before he feels a set of strong hands lift him off Alvarez and drag him away. One last rush of adrenaline surges through him as they do, and he struggles, struggles weakly against them, sobbing, praying, begging.
“No… Let me go… Help him, help… he needs help.”
But they don’t listen, no one listens to him.
“Help him… please, help him.”
A sharp pinch in his arm ends his pleas, his body becomes numb and finally gives in to the blissful sweet oblivion.
...
To be continued...?