Brendan DuBois - Dead of Night

But the bandaged man lying in bed saw me and said in a hoarse whisper, ‘Hey, Samuel, c’mon over.’

The men moved aside and I went to him, grasping the hand that didn’t have an IV in it. This was the first time I had ever seen Charlie out of uniform, and it was amazing how he seemed to have shrunk. There was a bandage around the back of his head, and his right leg was also bandaged and was hanging from an overhead chain. A tube was running out of his leg and an IV was feeding into his right hand. His face was scratched and bruised but he was smiling, and he squeezed my hand back, strongly. Peter had been right. Charlie was tough.

‘Guys, this is Samuel Simpson, from Canada,’ Charlie announced to the other Marines. ‘He was in the unit I was assigned to.’

The guys stared and a couple of the friendlier ones just nodded. Then Charlie said, ‘He’s a good guy. Gave me back-up when I needed it, and gave me good first aid. Probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.’

With that statement it was as though an iceberg of hostility had just shattered. The guys smiled and came over and shook my hand and slapped me on the back and introduced themselves to me—although I quickly lost track of who was a private and who was a gunnery sergeant and who was a lance corporal—and they said that if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was check in with the Sixth Marine Expeditionary Force and I’d be taken care of, don’t you worry about a thing. Then it was, hey, Charlie, we’ve got to get going.

And like a quick-moving thunderstorm the Marines jostled around Charlie, poking him and punching his shoulder and squeezing his hand, and then they were gone. Charlie said, ‘Spare chair there, Samuel, why don’t you take a seat?’

Which I did. I looked around the ward, saw a pile of yellow and red plastic toys in the comer. Charlie noticed where I was looking and said, ‘This used to be a daycare place for the hospital staff. But you can see what they had to do after yesterday’s cluster-fuck.’

‘How are you doing?’

‘Oh, Christ, I’m hanging in there,’ he said. ‘Got a slight concussion, happened when that Hungarian APC got greased. Also got some shrapnel in my leg and the back of my head. Good thing I was wearing my vest. The medics picked up about a half-pound of shrapnel back there. How about you, Samuel? You doin’ OK?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Miriam?’ he asked.

‘Yep. She and about a half-dozen others were captured. No word yet from the unit that took them. No ransom demands, not yet.’

Charlie shifted, winced some. ‘There will be, you can count on it.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Look, they treating you all right here? Anything I can get you?’

He frowned. ‘Yeah. A new country. Think you can arrange that?’

I said, ‘When we’re done here I think it’ll be a new country, all right. But not the one you grew up with, I’m afraid.’

‘Yeah… Shit, you know what I was thinking, back when we were getting shot at? That I was returning fire against fellow Americans, that’s what. Oh, I was under the proper command authority and properly detached to UNFORUS, but still… I was shooting at Americans, who were shooting back at me. A hell of a thing. Something like that hasn’t happened since the 1960s. Man, when I was in high school I saw some pictures in a history book of when the cities were burning, during some of the race riots. There you had jeeps with machine-gun mounts and APCs and troops with guns in the street. And everybody’s forgotten it ever happened, you know? Never thought there’d be another time when we’d be asked to fight in our own country, against our own citizens.’

Another shift, another wince. Charlie went on. ‘Don’t hear much news about it, but I guess there’s a few hundred guys from all the services who’re now serving time in the stockade for refusing to go out after the militias. Can’t rightly blame them for not raising a weapon against an American in a domestic situation. Shit, that’s what cops are for. Not the military.’

‘You must have found it hard, too,’ I said.

‘What makes you think that?’ he said sharply.

‘Well, I don’t know, the reaction I got from your buddies there, and . ..’

Charlie shook his head. ‘Just because I’ve got a uniform on doesn’t mean I don’t have a mind, Samuel. Those are good guys who’ll follow orders, just like they’ve been trained. And some of us… well, for some of us it’s personal.’

I waited, listened to the PA system, hoping for a Doctor Matthews to report somewhere. Charlie was staring right at me as if daring me to say something. So I did.

‘You want to tell me why it’s personal?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘OK.’

Charlie said, ‘But I will. Maybe it’s those damn drugs I’ve got going through me, make me loosen up my tongue. OK. One little talk from me, and then we drop it, OK? No questions from you. Then we talk about the weather or politics or whatever. That’s my deal, Samuel. All right?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

He took a deep breath, shuddered again from the pain. ‘My mom, she worked for an investment firm, as an admin aide. She was good, a good worker, brought me and my brothers up well after Dad died. A good mom. And she had the rotten luck to be working at an investment firm that had its offices near the World Trade Center construction site in Manhattan. Savvy?’

I couldn’t say a word. I only nodded. Southern Manhattan, and the third time it had been the target of hate. And this time the haters were not from overseas, they were from the home territory. And they wanted to out-score and out-terror the first and second times. No truck bomb. No hijacked airliners. Just the power of the split atom, splitting this country apart along old lines of hate and suspicion.

‘So that’s why it’s personal, and why I don’t mind trying to keep the peace, even if I am in-country. You know what I mean… ?’ Charlie said.

I nodded. We sat like that for a bit.

Charlie coughed and said, ‘You’re not saying much.’

‘You asked me not to.’

He started laughing at that, until he winced again from the pain. ‘Shit, yes, you’re right, Samuel. You are fuckin-A right. OK. We can talk now, but let’s not talk about Lower Manhattan or balloon strikes or yesterday’s shit storm. You got anything else you’d like to chat about?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for your help.’

‘Me? Man, I’m one fucked-up cat. I ain’t going anyplace soon.’

‘But you’ve got your friends, just like those Marines who left, right?’

Now Charlie sounded a bit suspicious. ‘Yeah, of course I do. What are you looking to do?’

I looked around, made sure we were alone, and then I told him. He pondered what I said and asked me a few questions, which I did my best to answer. Then he looked out at the ward, at someone in a gurney being wheeled away, a sheet covering the body from head to toe.

He looked back at me, held out his hand. I shook it, gave it a good squeeze.

‘OK, friend,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ve got it.’

A day after my talk with Charlie I was back at the ambush site. I had hung around the hospital parking lot for a while, and managed to hitch a ride with a small convoy of earth-moving equipment and APCs that was heading back to assist in the clean-up. The word I got, just before I left, was that the armistice talks were resuming and that the attack two days ago had been the work of rogue militia units who were opposed to any peace talks. I wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not—who could tell? — but I didn’t particularly care. The news from overseas had also been quiet. If Peter’s diskettes had made an impact yet with the British Prime Minister the news hadn’t gotten back here yet. The APC I rode in was from another Ukrainian unit, and one of the soldiers practiced his English on me, all during the long drive out there.