Although I wasn’t the fastest reader in the universe, I wasn’t bad. I’d preferred Mack Bolan and Casca books, growing up, and enjoyed immersing myself in anything with guns. Plus, there were some books which were passed around the military that I’d already read. These included
Armor
,
Starship Troopers
,
The Forever War
,
Old Man’s War, Ender’s Game, The Mote in God’s Eye, Legion of the Damned, Hammers Slammers
and
Bolo
. But there were a lot I had never read, books by C. J. Cherryh, David Gerrold, Jerry Pournelle, and Robert Buettner, to name a few.
Still, when I saw the list, it didn’t seem too bad. I’d read enough of them that I thought I could get a head start by answering questions about those I already knew. I must have read John Steakley’s
Armor
a dozen times. When I’d been working mechanized infantry, it had been all the rage. I remembered it being filled with violent combat scenes, something me and the other guys loved. But I also remembered it having a certain sensibility, as the main character developed almost a reluctance to continue killing an enemy who wouldn’t stop. Was this perhaps why they wanted us to read it? Because they were concerned for our humanity?
I selected
Armor
on the tablet, then skipped right to the test. The first question glowed on the screen:
DESCRIBE HOW YOU WOULD OVERCOME YOUR LOVE FOR A COMRADE MUCH LIKE FOREST DID FOR KENT IN ORDER TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD?
I stared at the question for several minutes. Perhaps I’d exaggerated the number of times I’d read the book. I might have only read it once. In fact, I might not have finished it at all. The idea that I’d actually read it once, much less a dozen times, might have been overly-optimistic. For the life of me I couldn’t remember any character named Kent. I know there was a pirate. And I knew there was a guy in a mech suit doing a lot of cool shit, but that’s all I remembered.
I tried to select the next question, but I couldn’t get to it without answering the first. I was going to have to read the book. Damn them.
I chose
The Forever War
instead. I was sure I’d read that at least twice, once in basic training, and once at a FOB in Iraq. I’d read that the author, Joe Haldeman, had been in Vietnam. There weren’t too many books written by people who’d actually been in war. This was one of them, and I remembered staring into the night and wondering what was out there beyond our position, and if Mr. Haldeman had done the same when he was in Vietnam. Had he had the same thoughts? A menagerie of fast food sandwiches, television shows, songs I used to dance to with a certain girl, and the recent memories of the death of one of my platoon mates, all squished and smashed like a human-sized pizza, but with too much red sauce. Or had he been thinking about writing
The Forever War?
When a girl I’d been dating for several months between deployments once asked me what my favorite book was, this was the book that came to mind. Whether it was my favorite was up for debate, but it was as good a contender as any of the others. I told her that it perfectly described the inability of a soldier to ever return to civilian life. She looked at me in stunned silence for a moment, then turned and left. It took me a long time to realize that I’d just said that I’d never be able to be with her, never really give my heart and mind to her. I’d basically told her I was broken.
Which I was.
The same as I was now.
I reminded myself that the only reason I wasn’t going bat-shit crazy right now was because of the mystery of it all. The newness of my predicament, the shared predicaments of all of us in the underground bunker, and the idea that even as broken as I was, I might be worth something, someday, if I ever had time to read all the books, watch all the movies, and pass all the tests.
I found myself looking around my tiny room. I didn’t pretend that I didn’t know why. I knew exactly why. I was looking for something I could use to take my life. Not that I was going to take it right this minute, but if I wanted to, and I knew I would, I wanted to be ready when the feeling arose.
I cursed. The problem with an institution creating cells for men and women who might try to commit suicide was that they generally knew all the things one could use to accomplish the job.
No sharp objects.
No access to electrical.
No way to tie something from the ceiling.
No way to slam your head against an outcropping.
The bed was an ergonomically curved frame, and the only part that extended was the mattress. A shelf along one wall was recessed. The shelf I pulled the tablet from was made of fabric. The mirror above the recessed sink was made out of stainless steel and was part of the wall. Even the toilet, which moved in and out of the room at the touch of a button, was made of a rubbery substance that made me not want to sit on it for any longer than was necessary.
Someone cried out, followed by a chorus of
shut up!
Nothing like a bunch of soldiers with whom to commiserate.
No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: ‘Come back with your shield or on it.’ Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.
Robert Heinlein,
Time Enough For Love
CHAPTER SEVEN
S
IX WEEKS PASSED
as I worked through the list. Days were punctuated by three meals and a midnight snack, provided by our trusty remote servants. Sometimes I read right through the night, interested in the battles and relationships with the characters, other nights I paced back and forth, staggering sometimes, as I tried desperately to stay awake so I could complete the task sooner. Twice I took tests which I failed, meaning I had to go back and read those sections of the books I’d failed to understand the first time. I should have known better. Whenever I thought something wouldn’t be on the test, it was, as if the test controllers had chosen the densest parts of the book to use to quiz me.
My strategy was to read all the books first and leave the movies for last. What at first had seemed daunting had become a succession of hills to take, military objectives. Once I conquered one, it was time to run down and conquer the next. My reading was getting faster too. Not that I’d learned how to scan, like PFC Paulsen back in Iraq, who seemed capable of reading a book a day, but I was no slacker.
We hadn’t seen anything of the officials running the complex, except when they came to remove all the tables and chairs, and when they came to remove the bodies. Two of our members had been determined enough to find a way to kill themselves. I watched as their bodies were carried away. I was detached. Other than Michelle and the asshole Olivares, I didn’t know anybody else. Unlike in a military unit, we didn’t share anything except our nightmares of war and the agreement we’d made with TF OMBRA to try and save the planet. Once we made it to Phase II, we’d have plenty of time to bond. Now was the time for concentration.
It took me a while to work out how they’d killed themselves. Whoever had constructed the rooms had done a magnificent job eliminating corners and sharp edges. Even the light fixtures were immovable. The silverware was made from Teflon rubber. The plates were made from indestructible plastic. Really, other than slamming one’s head against the walls, bars, or floor, there was little someone could do to hurt themselves.
Except for the underside of the bed. Doing sit ups my third day I saw it. The metal loops of the springs ran from one side of the frame to the other in a continuous interlocking web, both holding the mattress up and adding spring tension so it was less like sleeping on a rock and more like sleeping on a board. All of the metal pieces had been spot welded, probably to make certain we couldn’t use one of the ends. But the last spot weld at the foot of the bed on both sides was loose. I pried free one end, revealing a nasty-edged piece of wire, which once freed, I could bend with only a little amount of force.
It would take very little effort to rake my arm from wrist to elbow, dragging the metal through tissue and vessels to end it once and for all. At least once a day I found myself on the ground, staring at it. The metal represented a release, a way out. It was an alternative I could choose to take, or not.
Yet the more time passed, the less I looked at it. The more I immersed myself into the lives of fictional soldiers and contemplated the reality that there were real aliens out to get us, the more I wanted to live. It was extraordinary that the threat of an alien invasion could do what all the counseling and consulting had failed to do.
That is, of course, if I believed lock, stock, and barrel what TF OMBRA was telling me.
My thoughts slipped to my Aunt Nancy, who was as fond of conspiracy theories as she was of her gin. I could still see her, sitting at the Formica table in her tiny kitchen in Hackettstown, New Jersey, drinking gin and juice and smoking cigarettes like she was a major stockholder in a tobacco company. She’d wave her hand around, making miniature tornadoes as she turned the news of the day into something conspiratorial.
If a plane crashed, it was the government trying to cover something up. Her favorite theory was that every single plane that crashed was the result of a UFO encounter and it was our government’s secret treaty with the aliens that made them kill their own people. If there was a train wreck, it was to cover up some release of energy/noxious gas/alien technology/fill in the blank from whatever Top Secret government facility was nearest the crash site.
Then, of course, there was the weather. Major disasters were the result of the government’s weaponized weather machine spinning out of control. She’d theorized that the machine was located somewhere in the Midwest, which was the reason states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas were always hit the hardest.
When once asked about hurricanes, she’d laughed, explaining how the Soviet Union had put their own weaponized weather device into the hands of Fidel Castro. All one had to do was look at a map and see that all the hurricanes came from around Cuba as proof.
I’d developed my love for listening to the Night Stalker on late night radio from her. No matter how extraordinary her theories, the Night Stalker’s conspiracies were even crazier. Except that listening to his cold, velvet voice on the late night airwaves, I couldn’t help but believe in what he had to say.
My Aunt Nancy loved him. Often three sheets to the wind, she’d listen and provide a constant commentary about whatever the topic of the evening was.
Even into her sixties she’d dressed like a
House and Garden
housewife from the early nineteen-sixties. She always wore old fashioned party dresses and high heels. She was never seen without pearls. She wore her hair high on her head, the curls under tight control, until the day wore on and the New Jersey humidity took its toll. About the time the gin started to make her wobble, her curls would fall loose over her eyes. Sometimes she’d pause in mid-sentence to toss her head and get them out of her way, but more often than not she’d use the same hand she used to hold her ever-present cigarette, its red hot tip coming within millimeters of igniting the layers of hairspray.
As a kid, me and my cousins would watch her talk and wait for the inevitable. It was funny and we couldn’t wait, sometimes running into the yard and twisting as if we were in flames, burning, burning, burning. I used to find it funny, those memories of my Aunt Nancy. But when I saw D’Ambrosio do his own burning dance on a road in Iraq one fine evening, I lost all appreciation for those kid games. He bounced twice off the Bradley after being sprayed with the contents of an exploding Corolla’s fuel tank, as if the twenty-seven tons of metal could put him out. I remember raising my M4 and tracking him through my ACOG, thinking I might shoot him to save him, but chickening out at the last moment, not wanting to play God. Last I heard, he’d made it out of Walter Reed Burn Center, gone home to his family’s house, and drank a bottle of Drano.
Would have been simpler if I’d have just shot him.
And I bet knowing what he knew as he raised the blue liquid to his lips, he’d have begged me to do it.
The problem had been that I was already responsible for so many deaths. Could I be responsible for one more? Could my sanity take it?
All this seemed like so long ago.
The six weeks did a miracle at resetting my morale clock. Still, that last night before we got comms, I found myself lying on the floor, staring at that piece of broken spring and wondering how fast I’d be gone if I ripped into my arms, and how much it might hurt.
War is the ultimate reality-based horror show.
Col David Hackworth
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
AWOKE TO
voices.
“Marines are another thing altogether. If a Marine wants to kill himself, he locks the doors, bars the way with heavy furniture, keeps the windows shut with a long stick, and has three or four things at hand to do it. I once knew a Marine who was found with a rope around his neck, his wrists bled out, a knife through his chest, and later they found he’d taken twenty-five Ambien. He was one determined man.”
“So what happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were a Marine. Why didn’t you succeed in killing yourself?”
“Maybe I had second thoughts.”
“Did you?”
“No. The rope broke and before I could re-tie it to the overhead pipe, my Gunny Sergeant had me in lock down.”
“How does that stack up to being a Marine?”
“Pretty badly. I couldn’t even do that right.”
“Makes you want to kill yourself, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. All over again. This time I’d do it right.”
I’d fallen asleep on the floor. My back felt stiff. My left leg had a cramp from where I’d had it crossed over my right. The Bluetooth earpiece was still in my ear and the tablet was lying flat against my chest. I lifted it up. Instead of the usual black screen which appeared when it was resting, the words
COMMUNICATIONS TREE
were displayed across the screen.