Page 5 of Warrior's Walk

My body hits the ground hard, jarring every bone in my body, and before I can think to tuck and roll and grab my gun, blinding white-hot pain rips through my legs, dulling every other sense and thought. The sound of my bones breaking echoes through my ears and head. It’s a sound I canfeel, and I know it’s a sound I’ll never forget. When I come to a halt, I can’t see shit as my chute drapes over me, blanketing me in darkness.

Someone scrambles to uncover me. They unclip my ruined chute.

There’s only one thought on my mind. “Biddell! Where’s Biddell?”

“Fuck man, look at your leg!” It’s Ormen. He shouts at me, crouching down over my prone body.

I can’t think straight from the pain, but I muster the strength to look. It hurts a whole lot worse after seeing the extent of the damage. Through the gash in my pants exposing my lower leg, jagged shards of white bone poke from my torn flesh. The bottom half of my leg twists at an odd angle, and blood pours from the wound.

Ormen rifles through his ruck, grabs a tourniquet, and ties it off around my thigh.

“Holy fuckin’ fuck!” Bile bubbles in the back of my throat and spills from my mouth as I lose the contents of my stomach. The pain robs me of breath, and I can feel a heaviness in my chest from the lack of oxygen in my frozen lungs.

“Breathe, Rhett,” Ormen barks, frantically looking around. “Help!”

Swallowing the bitter saliva left in my mouth, I drop my head and clench my eyes shut, focusing on breathing through the pain. In through my nose, out through my mouth.

“Biddell landed. Go check him!” Ormen shouts at someone.

“We’ve got to rendezvous,” someone yells back. Warren—I barely recognize his panicked voice.

The buzzing is back in my ears, and the fight around me fades into a dull roar. My body burns hot with pain and I feel weak and a little woozy from the loss of blood. Ormen wrestles my ruck from my shoulders and uses it to prop up my leg, strapping it tightly to the two broken halves for support. Pain pulses in my stomach like a heartbeat as he jostles me.

“We gotta move, man.” He grabs me under the arms and drags me over the rocky ground at least twenty feet. Every bump and rock feel like massive boulders. The edges of my vision turn dark and I have to fight to stay conscious. Ormen drops me on apile of bodies, some writhing in pain, some still, most likely dead or close to it.

He crouches down in my line of sight. “Dustoff inbound. Just gotta hang on, buddy.”

He places his hand in mine, and I squeeze back, lifting it so I can see it. But the skin is black—not Ormen’s—and I turn my head to see a still body lying beside me.Biddell. I squeeze his hand, shouting at him, although I know he’s already gone.

My voice is hoarse and shaky with tears and pain. “Hold on, Biddell! Help’s comin’.”

The shouting around me grows louder, punctuated by the staccato popping of gunshots. They’re closing in on us, and I’m lying here like dead fucking weight, unable to fight or help my unit. Gritting my teeth against the pain about to rob me of consciousness, I grab my gun slung around my neck, and hold it up, ready to blow any motherfucker who walks into my line of sight into kingdom fucking come. My strength comes from adrenaline and fear, which helps numb some of the pain to keep me conscious.

The gunfire never stops. How big is the pile of bodies around me going to grow before it’s all over? My pant leg is sopping wet with my blood and I wonder how long I can hang on before help arrives. Will I even make it that long? The soldiers protecting us are standing out in the open, easy targets, refusing to take cover. I’m putting them at risk. Ormen, Warren, and the others… I’m jeopardizing their lives, lives that I can’t even help defend at the moment.

It could have been seven minutes or seventeen, I’m not really sure because time stops tracking, but I can hear the whirring of rotor blades get louder as the bird comes closer. The cloud of moon dust it kicks up as it lands chokes me, blinding my eyes. Ormen tries to drag me to the helo, but I reach out for Biddell.

“You gotta let go, Marsh! Let him go!” he yells over the roar of the blades.

Like fuck I will.

Ormen pries my fingers from Biddell’s lifeless hand and drags me as I scream—from pain, from loss, from fear—and hoists me onto a stretcher and onto the helo. My throat’s sore from screaming. I don’t stop until he drops Biddell beside me. I reach out for him again, squeezing my pain into him like I’m trying to use it to revive him.

“I’ll see you back at base, brother. Hang tight. Look after him for me,” Ormen shouts, squeezing my shoulder. Then he grabs his gun and charges into the fight, yelling out a primal war cry. “All the way, motherfuckers! All the fucking way!”

He doesn’t so muchas flinch as I slide the needle beneath his skin to start his IV. “Hold that bag above your head,” I order, shoving the pouch of blood at him. I can see from the amount of blood covering his uniform that he’s lost too much.

“Isn’t that your job?” he grumbles as he lifts his arm above his head.

“I’ll gladly hold the bag while you stabilize your leg.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and drops his head back down on the backboard. There isn’t much I can do for his leg mid-flight. It needs to be cleaned, disinfected, and pieced back together with painstaking care by a surgeon. I’m mostly trying to stem the loss of blood.

“Fuck my leg! Help him. Help my buddy.”

His hand that isn’t holding the bag of blood is gripping the hand of the man next to him.

I have to shout above the roar of the blades. “There’s nothing I can do for him! He’s gone. And if I don’t work on your leg, you will be too.”

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