Page 74 of Royal Guard

“I want to.”

I didn’t want to hurt him... but the pain was inside him, just like mine had been. Getting it out would hurt... but it might be the only way he could heal. I rolled over onto my stomach and lay atop him so that I could hug him.

And he told me.

55

GARRETT

“I enlisted right out of school,”I said. “My teachers said it was a good idea. What else was a big lunk like me going to do?”

Kristina squeezed me tight. “They shouldn’t have just written you off! You’re smart! Smarter than they knew!”

I shook my head. “Wasn’t just that. I’d always wanted to serve. Saw my dad doing it, wanted to be like him. Wanted to be part of something bigger. Saw the flag at the recruiter’s office and it just felt…right. First week of basic training, I realized I’d found something I was good at. I was bigger and I was strong and they just had to give me a mission and I wouldn’t stop until it was done.” I felt the rage inside me flare hot as I thought about how that loyalty had been betrayed.

“Anyway, I wound up in a squad with a great bunch of guys, all from Texas. Drummond, he was this tall, skinny guy, looked like he should be playingbasketball. He could put a bullet through theOon a Coke can from half a mile away. Felton was our medic: he was the smart one. The marines had put him through medical school. Martinez always kidded around, but he always had your back. But the guy I got on best with was Baker, our squad leader.”

“He was tough, but he was short: he always said he was 5’5” but we all knew he was 5’4”. When he was giving me an order and there was gunfire, I had to hunker down so he could shout in my ear. People joked about it: the little guy and the big guy. But we just fought well together. And back home, it was Baker who helped me move into my apartment, Baker who had my back in a bar fight, Baker who was there for me when my mom died.” I shook my head. “He was agreatleader. Always looked after his people.” I looked down at Kristina. “You remind me of him.”

She blushed.

“In a squad you fight together, you eat together, you guard each other while you’re sleeping. We went on too many missions to count, all over Iraq. When we came home to Texas on leave, we’d hang out. One by one, they got girlfriends, got married.” I felt my neck color. “I didn’t. Never was too good at all that stuff.”

Kristina drew in her breath in sympathy, but I shook my head. “But it was okay, I didn’t mind being the single one. We were one big family. The summers were barbecues and pool parties....” I trailed off, remembering. I didn’t know how to put it into words, but those long summer days, sinking a cold beer and seeing the kids running around... it had reminded me what we were fighting for. “The squad was my life,” I said simply.

Kristina tightened her arms around me. She couldsense something bad was coming.

“Then one day, back in Iraq…. We’re on a plane, flying back to base after a mission. Just the five of us, plus the pilot and co-pilot. A storm blows up out of nowhere. Worst storm I’ve ever seen in my life, the kind we used to get in Texas, where the whole sky’s alive and best thing you can do is hunker down in the cellar. But we’re right there in it, being hurled around, and there’s no place to land. It goes on for hours, until the plane sounds like it’s going to come apart. Then we lose both engines and after that we’re just a twig in the wind.”

Kristina was clutching at me, holding me as tight as I’d held onto my seat on that plane. “Don’t remember the crash,” I told her. “Just woke up in the wreckage. Pilot and co-pilot are dead, but my squad’s okay, just banged up a little. We get outside and we’ve got no idea where we are: dawn’s just breaking and it’s just desert in every direction.”

“We wait till nightfall for rescue: no one comes. We don’t have much water so we decide we need to get moving and it’s better to travel at night, when it’s cool. So we pick a direction and we start walking. Mile after mile after mile, the sand coming over our boots. But it’s okay: we’re marines. Marching ain’t gonna kill us.”

“Then we come to the town. Abandoned, most of the houses just rubble. Takes us an hour before we find part of an old sign and Felton translates. That’s when we find out that we’re not in Iraq, anymore. The storm blew us over the border. We’re inIran.The only five US soldiers, at that time, in the entire goddamn country. And we’re right out in the wilds, where it’s just local militia whohatethe US. We’re...alone.”I looked down at Kristina and she noddedsomberly. She was the one person who could really understand what it had felt like.

“We hide out in one of the houses that’s mostly still standing and get on the radio. We manage to raise a US airbase that’s just over the border in Iraq, and everyone cheers. But then we give them our location... and it all goes quiet. We raise them again but we’re told to wait for instructions. And then the local militia arrives and starts shooting. They’d found the plane and followed our tracks, I guess. And they’re not going to stop until we’re dead.”

“There are way too many of them. We barricade ourselves in the house and try to hold them off. But they’re calling their friends on the radio, spreading the word that we’re there. All of us have been fighting in Iraq for years. We’re not new to war. But this isn’t war. Theyhateus. They’re going to slaughter every one of us.”

I’d closed my eyes. I could feel the heat of the desert on my skin, taste the dust in my mouth. I could see the abandoned house all around me: crumbling stone block walls, ragged mats on the floor, odd items that the family who’d fled had left behind: a jug, a plate, a kid’s sweater. I knew that I was still in Lakovia but the softness of the bed beneath me, the quiet, even the cool, wet air from the window... all of it faded away until I was crouched by a window, eyes straining against the sunlight as I watched figures creeping over the rubble towards us. Only Kristina remained real. Touching her was all that kept me grounded.

“It’s hell: baking hot, dry and dusty, there’s not enough water and we’re all strung out from walking all night after the plane crash. We’re trying to watch every direction at once: there’s so many of them andthey just keep coming. We can’t take a break even for a minute to rest or drink. Then Martinez takes a bullet in the chest. A really bad wound. Felton, our medic, says he needs medevac, but we still can’t get anyone on the radio. So Felton’s got to treat him right there, in the damn dining room, as best he can.”

“That takes us down to three guys guarding the house: Baker, Drummond and me. And we’re running low on ammo, too, so we have to make every shot count. It’s getting bad, but Baker, he just looks at the rest of us and he says,we are going to hold this house.We are going tohold outbecause that’s what Marines do. And when he said it, we believed it.” I stroked Kristina’s hair. “Like I said, he was a lot like you.”

“Night comes and we don’t have night vision so it’s justblack.You see movement and you have to pray and fire. We’rebeggingnow on the radio, begging for someone to come get us out of there, but no one answers. And there’s this moment when I look at Baker and he looks at me and we realize—”My voice grew tight, my throat suddenly dry. “We realize they’re not coming.”

“By morning, it’s really bad. We’re down to our handguns and we’ve been two nights without sleep. We’re jumping at shadows, really losing it. Felton’s trying to keep Martinez alive, but he’s in agony.” It was hard to speak, now. I could see the blood seeping through the bandages. “Martinez was the fun one. Like when we had the pool parties, he’d always cannonball into the pool. Or this one time, we were out there in Iraq over Christmas. So he puts on a Santa outfit—all he had was a Santa hat and a red shirt, but he stuffed a parachute up the shirt—and he goes around handing out gifts. It was only cookiesfrom the mess hall and dumb shit like that, but... damn, if felt good, just to know we weren’t forgotten. He had kids: two little girls. And he had this big, deep laugh, like he was laughing from the bottom of the sea.” I swallowed. “Only... now he’s screaming. So loud the walls are rattling with it. And he’s pleading for something for the pain and Felton keeps telling him there’s nothing left.”

I could feel that Kristina had lifted her head and was staring up at me, but I couldn’t look at her. If I did, I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue. So I gently stroked her hair, stared at the ceiling, and kept going.

“We finally get someone on the radio. American, but no call sign. Some other grunt, probably disobeying orders just speaking to us. He just says, “Sorry.” And that’s when we know for sure: no one’s coming.”

“Just before noon, Drummond screams. He’s at the window across the house from me: I turn around and there’s a militia fighter right there, with a knife stuck into Drummond’s throat. We were all so tired and strung out, he’d managed to creep right up to the window without Drummond seeing.” I swallowed and had to stop for a second. “Drummond was the oldest. He had a stepdaughter who had something wrong with her spine, and he needed the pay for medical bills.” I pressed my lips together. “I shoot the guy but it’s too late, Drummond’s dead.”

“Now there’s only two of us, Baker and me, who can guard the house. Felton’s too busy trying to keep Martinez alive. There’s no way we can watch all the windows and doors so we have to go outside, try and hold them off at a distance. But we’re barely outside when it starts getting dark. At first, we think maybewe’ve lost track of time and it’s dusk. Our watches are telling us it’s noon, but we’re so exhausted, we can’t think straight. Then we see this...thingon the horizon. Not like cloud, or smoke. It’s just dark brownnothing,you can’t even tell how far away it is because there are no features. It looks like the goddamn edge of the world. And whatever it is, it’s growing fast. Everything stops. Even the gunfire from the militia stops. Everyone’s just standing there staring at it.”

“People talk about the wind howling, but I never really understood what they meant till right then. It was howling like a monster, like it hated us. That’s when we figured out it was a sandstorm. Just before it hit us.”

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