Page 56 of Scar

Julian didn’t know when he’d broken various fingers, but he was only able to move certain ones. A thousand knives pierced his hands as he pushed himself up. He landed unceremoniously on his ass before toppling backward. His head hit the hard, unforgiving rock of the cave wall.

It was sometime later when Julian woke up. Tyke was calling his name over and over again. Julian groaned. It felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to the back of his skull. As Julian shifted, he realized his hands were now bound in front of him. It took him a moment to recall his struggles to contort his body enough to move his hands out from behind him.

Falling forward onto his hands and knees, Julian’s stomach quaked and contracted. He gagged, but nothing came up. There was nothing theretocome up.

Not having the energy to stand, Julian crawled his way across the cave floor. It felt like it took hours, but he doubted the terrorists would leave them alone that long. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious and they’d already been gone a long time.

Julian’s hands felt something in front of him. He looked up. It was his crate. The one he’d fallen off of when they cut his rope. Julian touched his hands to his throat and felt the noose still around his neck. He hadn’t realized it was still there, like the fibers had become a part of him.

Through hazy eyes, Julian looked up. He saw the wooden arm that had been crudely constructed above his head. Reality came crashing down on him. Even if he managed to get up, managed to release Tyke, managed to walk to the mouth of the cave, there was still no guarantee of escape. They’d tried that. It had failed. They were down two more men and neither he nor Tyke were getting any stronger.

The rope to his noose was cut. It would be pointless to get back onto his box, though Julian did use it to help him balance as he rose to his feet. Leaning against the crate, Julian met Tyke’s eyes. Fuck, the kid was so young. Julian didn’t know much about him, but that didn’t make Tyke any less his brother.

Julian thought of José back home.Home. There was nothing left for him in Millview, Texas. Julian hadn’t been back since he’d caught a bus out of there when he was eighteen. José had a home, a family who loved him. He would be hurt and saddened when he learned of Julian’s death, but he would live on. He had a mother and little brother at home who loved him and supported him.

Julian had no such family. He had brothers of circumstance, not blood. Once a large number, now down to two. In the grim anticipation of his fate, Julian could only be happy that José was not here with him, that he’d chosen a different path.

José was not going to die in these caves. One of Julian’s brothers would survive.

Tyke nodded as if Julian had spoken out loud. “It was an honor to serve with you, sir. I have no regrets.”

With his rope now loose enough to give him some slack, Tyke leapt forward, like he was jumping off of a cliff. The rope jerked. Like a pendulum, Tyke’s body was pulled back by the force of his swing. Only this time, his feet hung lower than the top of the crate. It was knocked aside, leaving nothing but empty air below him.

Julian didn’t know if it was the way Tyke jumped or some saving grace from God, but his youngest brother did not suffer as the others had. His neck snapped in the noose, and Little Tyke was no more.

Julian wasn’t even sure he was breathing. A coldness fell over him, a sense of solitude he’d never felt before in his life. He was alone. Utterly and truly alone. Despite his moniker, Julian had never workedalonebefore. He knew that his team was out there, watching his back, ready to come to his aid at the first sign of distress.

Except now.

Now, there was no team left. He truly wassolo,and the silence he’d once craved so much was now deafening.

Julian tried to stand up fully, using the crate as a crutch. He stumbled. He had to find the strength. He owed his brothers this.

The courage to die with them.

It wasn’t a great plan, but lack of weapons, strength, and options, it was the only one Julian had. He staggered forward towards the pile of bodies in the center of the cave. He worked his way through blood, bile, flies, maggots, and Lord knew what else to reach the Taliban member Tyke had killed. Julian still wondered if the man had walked into the cave with the intent to die so that Julian, Farmboy, Little Tyke, and Cajun would believe their escape was successful.

If so, that was fucked up beyond comprehension.

Julian grabbed the man’s turban off of his head. Long waves of greasy black hair fell from the tangles of the cloth. He wasn’t sure if it was true, but he remembered hearing somewhere that a standard turban was eighty-two inches long. That should be plenty long enough for what Julian intended.

Making his way back to his crate, Julian had to catch his breath. There was a possibility he had a few broken ribs, too. Or just lack of food and water was finally catching up with his body. The last bit of water he’d drank was from the dead Taliban member’s water flask they’d discovered prior to their escape attempt. Was that three, four days ago?

It was so hard to tell. The real mindfuck would be if his entire team had only been captured a number of days and not the weeks Julian suspected.

Like a toddler trying to crawl up onto a seat that was too tall for him, Julian struggled to lift himself up onto the crate.

Distant shouting echoed down the tunnel outside the cave. Julian paid it no mind. It wouldn’t be the first time the terrorists had been fighting amongst themselves.

It took some time to fling one end of the turban around the wooden arm overhead. The ceiling itself wasn’t that high, maybe two feet above Julian. The hardest part was ignoring the increasingly loud shouting as he worked the two ends of the turban between the back of the noose still around his neck.

Not wanting the knot in the turban to give out, he triple-knotted it.

Julian walked to the edge of the crate, facing his fallen brothers. Images of other soldiers in American uniforms storming the cave filled his vision as he stared blindly ahead. He even thought he saw his Commander in full assault gear shouting at him to stay put. None of it was real. It wasn’t the first hallucination starvation and dehydration had brought on, but it would be the last.

Julian stepped off the crate.

CHAPTER15

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