Page 92 of Walking Wounded

No, Luke thinks. Hal’s not getting blown up again. Not on his watch.

He steps forward, scoops up the package, and takes two running steps down the sidewalk. It’s heavy in his hand, dense in a way he isn’t expecting. He feels the contents shift.

He’s never been an athlete – that was always Hal – but he can throw. He cocks his arm back and hurls the bomb out into the middle of the empty street. Away from Hal, from Matt, from the reporters. Away.

It explodes in a great burst of white and phosphorescent orange, a firecracker unfurling across the road.

And then everything is black.

14

The phone call came at noon on a Wednesday in the middle of a dreary November week, all the colors of the city long-since bled into a rain-soaked gray. One look at the number flashing on the screen, and Luke knew it was an international call. And he knew only one person currently out of the country.

He fumbled the phone twice getting it to his ear. “Hello? Hal?”

A pause. A deep, trembling breath. “Yeah, hey.” Hal’s familiar voice was cracked and heavy as old sidewalk cement. “It’s me.”

Luke’s pulse skittered and jumped. He felt it swell in his throat until he didn’t think he could swallow. Something waswrong. Something was so, so wrong; he could feel it coming down the phone line. “Where are you?”

Hal grunted, and Luke knew that sound, that same little grunt he’d heard when Hal pulled a hamstring playing ball in high school. Pain. “Germany.”

“Okay. Um.” Luke wet his lips. “And how did you get from Afghanistan to Germany?”

Hal breathed a laugh. “Got blown up.”

Luke’s vision whited out. It was a long moment before he realized he was gripping the receiver so hard he’d lost feeling in his hand, and that the tinny sound in his ear was Hal asking if he was okay.

He took a deep, gasping breath. “Shit. Oh, shit, shit…Are you alright? How bad are you hurt? Hal?”

“I got a little banged up. Docs says I’ll make a full recovery, in time. My arm’s sorta…broken.”

“Jesus Christ, Hal.”

“I’m okay.”

“Obviously not!”

“Luke, please, just…”

Luke bit his lip, hard, and swiped at his eyes behind the rapidly-fogging lenses of his glasses. “When are you coming home?”

“Tomorrow. I was wondering.” Hal swallowed, an audible gulp. “Can I maybe stay with you? My mom’s gonna be hysterical, and I–”

“Of course. When can I pick you up?”

And that was how Luke took the rest of the week off and found himself waiting at baggage claim at three the next afternoon. It took him almost a full minute to recognize his best friend when he finally appeared.

Hal had always been a tall, broad-shouldered, fit guy. But the Army had taken his rough clay physique and honed it into a perfect weapon, nothing but bone and heavy muscle. His Army hoodie and sweatpants hung off him, somehow highlighting his spare, strong frame, rather than hiding it. He looked sharp-edged, sandblasted, dangerous. And he looked broken, because he was. A gun disassembled into its component parts, laid out on a table under a harsh light.

Luke swallowed a pained, sympathetic noise and went to his friend.

Hal’s right sleeve was pushed up to reveal a clunky white cast that went all the way down to his knuckles, fingers and thumb protruding uselessly. He walked with an obvious limp, favoring his left side. A speckling of tiny scabs covered the left side of his face.

But his green eyes were soft and tear-filled when Luke reached him, and he opened his arms so Luke could wrap him up tight in a hug.

Luke squeezed him carefully, gently, marveling at the hard steel of his body, tears clogging his throat. He was alive, and he was here, and Luke was hugging him. Jesus. He pressed his face into the hoodie’s raised collar and breathed deep the smells of airplane, hospital soap, and Hal, that subtle note that was his skin, and hair, andhim.

Hal rubbed soothing circles across Luke’s back with his left hand. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s really okay.”

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