Riders

by Veronica Rossi

  Four weeks in, our class had been reduced by around half, to fifty guys. We were pulled away from the steady stream of road marches and weapons drills for a parachute jump. Most of us had just gotten our jump wings in Airborne School, and they wanted to keep our training fresh in our minds.

  We loaded into an Air Force C-130 just after 10:00 a.m. Cory and I took our seats side by side, how we’d pretty much been for the past month. As the plane’s propellers fired up, the anticipation of the coming thrill erased the aches that had been piling up in my body. By the time we were in the air, I found myself grinning. Like every other five-jump chump.

  My first jump a few weeks earlier had required a leap of faith just to get out the door. But then the canopy had opened four seconds later, right on time like it was supposed to, and I’d relaxed, and it had been amazing. It was real quiet and peaceful on the way down, and you couldn’t beat the view.

  This jump would be my sixth. Since it was only intended to refresh our training, we were jumping Hollywood-style, which meant we weren’t wearing our weapons, rucks, or combat load. Without all the gear, I felt more comfortable, and I knew it would also give me more time on the descent. Jumping from a thousand feet, the whole thing never lasted much longer than a minute—combat jumpers need to get on the ground fast—but without all the battle rattle weighing me down, I might get a few more seconds in the air than normal.

  I sat back. Compared to the stuff I’d been doing, this was going to be a treat.

  Listening to the drone of the engines, my eyes moved over the guys sitting in jump seats against the outside skin of the aircraft and in rows down the middle. It’d been a long time since I’d felt like I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

  Then Cory dug an elbow into my side. “Good, Blake?”

  The question sounded casual but I knew it wasn’t. The week before, we’d been pulling an all-night march on Cole Range—acres of Georgia woods reserved for our training—and we got talking about the worst things we’d ever been through. I was so sleep-deprived, hungry, and sore, I let slip that nothing had ever felt tough since my dad had died August 2nd of the previous year. Which happened to be a year ago, that very day. I was sitting on that plane on the anniversary of his death—and Cory had remembered.

  But I had it under control.

  “Good, Ryland,” I replied. Then I flipped him off as a thank-you for asking.

  In the center aisle, the jumpmaster started going through the jump sequence. Get ready, stand up, hook up, check static line, check equipment, sound off. I went through each check, along with the fifty guys around me. Airborne School put thousands of soldiers through this process every month and every part of it ran like a well-oiled machine.

  As we approached the drop zone, the jumpmaster opened the door and cold air rushed into the plane. Sweat rolled down my back as the adrenaline buzzed through me. The feeling of toeing right up to the edge of my limits was familiar. I’d leaned pretty hard on it over the past year because it made me forget exactly what Cory had just reminded me of.

  The jumpmaster gave the go command and the guys at front of the line started exiting, one after another, handing their static lines to the safety by the door and launching into the sky.

  We moved quickly. In seconds it was Cory’s turn. He jumped through the door and disappeared, and then I was up. I took my last steps on the plane and threw myself out. As the air current grabbed me, I locked my feet and knees together and hit a good exit position. The plane’s engine noise receded rapidly behind me. As this was a static-line jump, my chute would autodeploy. My job was just to make sure that happened properly.

  Setting my hands on my reserve chute, I counted off like I’d been trained to do. “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand.”

  What the…?

  Where was the tug?

  I looked up, searching for an open canopy like I’d seen in my previous jumps.

  It wasn’t open.

  What I saw above me was a twist of pale silk. The canopy had rolled into a tight line. I instantly recognized it as a parachute malfunction—a streamer, also called a cigarette roll because of the way the parachute looked.

  It offered no lift capability at all so I was still in a dead free fall. I shot past Cory, then saw him above me, suspended by his canopy and looking the way I was supposed to be looking. In the rush of the wind, I thought I heard him yell my name.

  Then time went into slow motion and my training kicked in.

  I ripped at the handle on the reserve chute and watched in disbelief as the reserve went straight up into the main, still streaming above me, then as the two wrapped and twisted together.

  At this point, I knew I had a real mess on my hands but I stayed right with my training. It’d been drilled into me that the proper reaction to a reserve that failed to inflate was to reel it back in hand-over-hand and throw it back out, away from the main. As many times as it took. For the rest of my life. So I did that. I pulled and reeled in my reserve like I was in a tug-of-war for the ages.

  I hadn’t missed a beat in my reactions, everything felt like instinct, but some part of me was stunned that I was suffering a double malfunction, every jumper’s worst nightmare. They were incredibly rare—but not rare enough for me right then. The drop zone was coming up fast. Really fast. I finally bunched my reserve into a ball in front of me. With a heave, I threw the reserve down and away as hard as I could and wham! My harness yanked against me, digging into my groin.

  My reserve had finally opened. The main flapped next to it, still in a twist but no longer causing problems.

  This should’ve been great news but as I looked down at the earth, coming at me like a planet-sized bullet, I knew it was too late. My velocity wouldn’t allow for a safe landing. Or even a survivable one.

  I had moment’s thought about my father and the coincidence that was happening, the two of us falling to our deaths on the same day, then I reminded myself of the correct parachute landing fall position.

  Feet and knees together. Tuck chin and elbows. Land on balls of feet, then roll to calf, thigh, arc body—

  I hit so fast it felt like I landed everywhere at once—feet, ass, head.

  The last thing I remember was hearing the crunch of bones in my arm and my legs breaking. And that was it.

  I was done.

  CHAPTER 4

  “What happened after you fell?” Cordero asks.

  There’s a new intensity in her eyes. Same with the guys guarding the door. They’ve been indifferent so far. Almost bored. Not anymore.

  “After I fell?” I say, buying myself a second to shake off that fall and get my heart to settle back down. Did I just say everything I think I said? Did I tell her about my dad?

  Stay on topic, Blake. Answer the question. Only what she asks. But even that’s not so simple. What do I say here—the truth?

  I fell, then my bones snapped, and then everything went quiet and I was floating in the stars, surrounded by them, breathing them, feeling them, dead, I knew I was dead, but I still heard guys yelling, felt Cory doing chest compressions, keeping my heart going, then something cinched tight to my left wrist and the life surged back into me?

  No way. I’m not telling her that. She’s not ready yet. But these drugs in me are wicked.

  I think it.

  Words come out.

  That’s dangerous.

  And my recollection feels too sharp. Too real. Just now it felt like I slipped into the past. As I was talking, my mind dove much deeper. I could see every detail. Feel every sensation. I literally just relived my death.

  “Gideon?”

  “Yes?” I was droning again. Basketball brain is bad news. The fact that the Kindred are out there and I’m stuck in this chair is even worse news. The radiator’s going again. I didn’t even hear it go on.

  “What happened after the fall?”

  “I woke up in the hospital. Walter Reed Medical Center. I’d been in ICU for a few days when I
came around. My mom flew out to be with me but I only have a vague memory of that. Of anything from those days, actually, because I was either unconscious or drugged. Kinda like right now. By the way, Nat, Natalie … Cordero. I have a supersensitive stomach and it’s not liking whatever you gave me. Puking’s a personal specialty. I hope you’re quick.”

  “Your files from Walter Reed are interesting,” she says, without missing a beat. “You were released within a week of being admitted.” She looks up, her eyes going a little wide. “That’s awfully fast.”

  “Awfully so.”

  “Where did you go afterward?”

  “I was transferred home. I’d stabilized much sooner than the doctors expected. They couldn’t seem to get a good grasp on what needed to be fixed. The status of my injuries … they described it as ‘dynamic.’ The docs did what they could, set the major bones—the femur and tibia—then decided to give the swelling a chance to subside before bringing me back for further assessment.”

  “Your injury status was dynamic?”

  “Constantly changing.”

  “Thank you, I know what it means. Where’s home?”

  “Half Moon Bay, California.”

  “And what happened there?”

  “Things got weird.”

  Cordero sits back in her chair. She threads her fingers together. “Tell me about the weird,” she says.

  So I do.

  CHAPTER 5

  Okay. Home.

  I was only there for about a day, but a lot happened in that time. It was when I first started noticing that things with me weren’t right.

  From the second I woke up, I was so disoriented that I didn’t recognize my own room. I remember thinking the desk and the surfboard hanging over the window looked familiar before I realized they were actually mine. And my body felt strange. Not how I expected for being so busted up. I had air casts on my left leg and arm—I’d fallen on that side—but I didn’t feel any pain. My muscles only felt swollen, like they’d been stuffed with cotton balls. I chalked that up to all the pain meds I’d been taking.

  Another strange thing about that morning was being alone. For days I’d been under the constant care of doctors and nurses at Walter Reed, then during my transfer home. Before that I’d been surrounded by guys all the time, in a nonstop flow of activity. You could call RASP a very dynamic environment. But that day in my room all I heard was the far-off hum of Highway 1. I was hyperaware of not having anywhere to be for the first time in months, so I just stayed there for a while, staring at the stripes of sunshine on my window blinds, absorbing my new situation.

  Mom hadn’t moved anything in my room since I’d left home. My desk was still crowded with baseball trophies. My camping gear and backpacks were still piled in the corner. My graduation cap and gown were still thrown over the back of my chair. Everything looked too flimsy and bright. Like toys compared to the gear I’d been using in the Army.

  After a minute or two, I rallied the courage to take a look at myself. My injuries could have definitely been worse but they were no cakewalk, either. Beneath the air casts and my clothes, I knew I was black-and-blue. Stitched up like a quilt. A real mess. Once the swelling went down, it was possible I’d need surgeries in my arm, wrist, and leg, followed by months of rehab before I could even think about getting back to Fort Benning. I’d been told at Walter Reed that could all take up to a year, but I’d refused to consider what that really meant in front of my mom and the doctors. Now I did, and it just about killed me.

  I don’t expect you to understand this but enlisting in the Army, it was … um. It was a really good thing for me. I’d been in hell since my dad died. But RASP had turned things around for me. It was something positive when I’d needed it, and lying on my bed that morning, I couldn’t accept the setback I’d just been dealt. That I was going to miss a year while I healed. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go back to how I’d been before.

  As that sank in, anger moved through me like nothing I’d ever felt before. A feeling way bigger than frustration or disappointment. It was rage. Rage that felt like heat inside me, a fever to the millionth degree. So much it seemed measurable, like if you had the right lens, the right equipment, you’d see thermal waves in the air around me.

  I was on strict orders not to move unless absolutely necessary. Parts of my femur had shattered and had only just been set. Right then, I couldn’t have cared less. With that anger sizzling inside me, I couldn’t lay there any longer.

  I shifted to the edge of the bed, slid my legs off the mattress, and sat up. A head rush hit me hard, my pulse a shrill cry in my ears, and the room carouseled around me, but I knew there’d be more. I braced myself for the pain I knew was coming.

  It never did. Aside from dizziness and anger that felt like burning cordite inside me, I felt okay. My left arm and leg felt puffy and a little numb, but that was all.

  My mom had left a note on my bedside table beneath a glass of water and my bottles of pain meds—a pharmacy’s worth. She was on a quick run to the grocery store. I was supposed to take my next doses as soon as I woke up because I was already two hours late. She’d also left my crutches leaning against the wall. I passed on the drugs, grabbed a crutch for my healthy arm, and stood.

  Still fine.

  I kept going.

  To walk with only one side of my body, I had to drag my crutch in a half circle ahead of me, then step, then drag, then step, sort of like a human compass. I figured that out as I left my room and made my way into our short hallway, past the pictures of me and my twin sister, Anna, playing naked on the beach as babies, then me with braces and zits in Little League uniforms, then me with braces and zits before junior prom. I attribute most of my mental toughness to growing up walking that hallway day after day.

  I gave myself a goal to get to the front door because setting goals is how I do things and I needed to keep moving. I needed to feel like I could still get around on my own. If I could just get past the front door, it’d be a sign that I was back in control, and already recovering.

  As I hobbled into our small living room, I noticed some moving boxes stacked under the window and stopped. Anna’s painting of the ocean had been taken down from its spot above the couch and leaned against the wall. Our bookshelf was empty except for two framed photos. One of my dad kneeling by a swordfish on his best friend’s fishing boat, the other of me as a scrawny-ass kid riding a two-foot wave like I was the king of everything.

  The signs were all there. We were selling the house.

  I hadn’t expected that, though I should’ve. My mom managed a seafood restaurant by the harbor. She made an okay living but she was paying for Anna’s college. I tried to help. I gave her as much as I could from my Army paychecks, but it wasn’t much. Without my dad’s income, I knew we couldn’t stay in our house—the house my dad had built—and give my sister a college education. Still. I hadn’t realized we were that close to selling. I hated that my mom had to handle this—the sale, a move, her life—alone. But I didn’t know how to help. How could I take some pressure off? Especially now that I was busted up?

  Hobbling past the moving boxes, I made it to the front door and stepped outside. The concrete walkway felt cool under my right foot; my left was safely encased in the air cast.

  Half Moon Bay, where I grew up, is a small town southwest of San Francisco right on the Pacific Ocean. It’s a fishing town and a surfing town and the smell there is a combination of lobster traps and highway exhaust and tourist restaurants. You know the smell of fish and chips? That’s home for me. A hundred percent, it’s home. It’s the best smell in the world. I’d missed it, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about the move. Soon this wouldn’t be home. Where would my mom go? And everywhere I looked I saw memories of my dad. The street, where we used to throw the baseball. The driveway, where he used to wash his truck. His workshop, in the garage.

  I’d already lost him. Was I going to lose these memories of him, too?

  My next-door neighbo
r, Mrs. Collins, was out tending the roses along her picket fence. Mrs. C had just retired after being a nurse for forty years. Her husband had flown F-4s for the Air Force in Vietnam. Mrs. C had never had kids, so she’d sort of adopted Anna and me as unofficial grandkids. She loved to bake and had this great sense of humor. The day I enlisted, she brought over an olallieberry pie with a note that said, Dear Gideon, The Army is a fine path too, I suppose.

  As much as I liked her, I was in no mood to talk. But I shuffled over to her anyway, because I knew my mom would never hear the end of it if I didn’t say hello.

  “Hey, Mrs. C,” I said, trying to settle myself down. The personal anger atmosphere I’d developed was still with me, this searing heat that seeped from my skin. “How you doing today?”

  “Gideon?” Her eyes met mine. They seemed foggy, like she wasn’t really focusing on me. And she’d frozen in place, letting the long red rose she’d just clipped fall to the grass.

  “Mrs. Collins? You all right?”

  She blinked. “Of course I am. I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I didn’t say you did. What is it you want?” she demanded, her cheeks jiggling.

  I didn’t really register her question right away. It seemed too harsh, and her gaze had gone from foggy to granite. “I was just walking to the beach.”

  Actually I’d been hoping she’d heard about my accident and would offer to bake me a get-well pie, but not anymore. She was starting to freak me out.

  “Liar.” She pointed the clippers at me. “You’re not going to the beach, young man. All you’re doing is standing there wasting my time!”