Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  I definitely did not need to mention that. And I most definitely did not need to be thinking about tan lines.

  “Major,” I said, stepping up next to him, depositing my duffel on the ground next to his. I was fairly certain he could wear his duffle indefinitely without breaking a sweat, but in this kind of heat, I was going to take advantage of every possible way to reduce the strain.

  It wasn’t actually the heat, but the humidity, that was overpowering. It wasn’t usual during this time of the summer, but the weather reports showed clear skies and good weather.

  Other than the heat, and the heavy humidity.

  “Doctor,” he said, making a little check on the paper in front of him, next to what I could only assume was my name.

  I hadn’t failed to notice that he only ever addressed me as Doctor. Never by my last name. Never by my first. Never by my rank. I guess he was consistent, if nothing else.

  “Muggy today,” I offered, like an old man sitting on a front porch.

  He looked out at the empty field in front of us, like he was considering it for the first time, like up until then it had somehow escaped his notice that the weather wasn’t fit for man or animal.

  “I guess it is,” he said, and silence stretched between us.

  It seemed to be how it always was, that underlying zing of tension that never went away, that barely concealed hunger that neither one of us wanted to address.

  Well, I wasn’t sure that neither of us wanted to address it, but at least we both acknowledged we shouldn’t address it.

  Sort of.

  It wasn’t long before the cadets arrived, and after a quick equipment check we were on our way.

  We were given a simulation scenario: the plane had gone down and each cadet was placed in a small group of three. They had between them rations for one day, no communication devices and no change of clothing.

  Like everything about survival sims, it seemed pretty upfront. None of those stipulations presented as a deal breaker. We collected their phones as they arrived, and stored them in a single bag I was going to be in charge of. The Major and I tossed ours in there for good measure.

  And then we were on our way, a seven-mile walk scheduled before we hit the base of the mountain.

  Matthews wasn’t from the area, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t spent much time up in the mountains, but when I’d looked at his sketch of how he thought the cadets would play out their sim, it certainly appeared that he’d spent an extended amount of time scoping out the area.

  We were off at a nice clip, but by the time we had four miles under our belt we’d all started to drag.

  All of us, except Matthews, of course, who looked just as fresh as the moment I’d first seen him in the field.

  Damn that man. It was not fair that he could be trudging through this kind of heat and looking so fine, while I was all but dissolving.

  I was more than ready for the shade that greeted us at the edge of the mountain. Not that I would ever admit that. I didn’t need to give Matthews any more fuel for his fire. He’d made it perfectly clear where he thought I stood in the pecking order of soldiers.

  Fortunately, I didn’t need to do the grumbling about the exercise, because the cadets were doing it for us.

  I agreed with each and every one of them- silently.

  By early evening we had reached our final destination and were setting up camp before each team moved to address dinner.

  Per the requirements, the teams were set up twenty feet apart from one another, and were expected to engage in conversation, discussion, and strategizing only with the others in the group. Each was to pretend there was no one else around them.

  Matthews and I were to be flies on the wall.

  We found a spot perched above them, so we would have a better view of them as they worked. From there we could take the notes we would need to add to their files.

  He watched them intently from up above. There was something vaguely predatory in the way he studied them.

  In fact, since we’d entered the woods, he seemed different. Not that I knew him very well before, but we had been spending a fair amount of time together in the past few weeks, and he just seemed…different. More at ease. More in tune. Like there was something about being there that reset him.

  I really couldn’t understand it, since I was pretty much a hot mess of exhaustion. My back and feet were killing me, but to each his own, I suppose.

  “So what do you think?” he asked, settling onto his bedroll.

  “About the walk?” I turned toward him, and then wished I hadn’t. If I had thought he was good looking before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now, dappled by the tree’s shadows, his face swimming in and out of the light, his eyes that amazing shade of grey.

  Christ, I was like a teenager just learning she had hormones.

  He gave me something I could only classify as a smirk.

  “Actually, I meant about the cadets. What do you think about them and how they’re doing?”

  “Oh,” I said, peering down at them, watching them sort through their belongings, take stock, and begin to formulate a plan. “I think they’re doing well?”

  I hated myself for turning it into a question, for having to ask something when I knew damn well I had my own opinions about it.

  “I agree,” he said. “They’re doing fairly well. No one’s done anything exceptionally well, and no one’s done anything exceptionally stupid. So all things considered I think they’re in a good place.”

  We watched them a while longer, not talking to one another, sitting closer to each other than we should.

  The rain came sometime in the night.

  Before it did, there was a single crackle of heat lightning that zipped through the sky, one loud clap of thunder I was sure must have been something else at first.

  And then the pouring rain.

  It came down in sheets. It was hard to see even a few feet in front of us; the ground immediately softened, sucking at us with each step.

  “Fuck,” I heard Matthews say loud enough to be heard over the sound of the spattering rain, from somewhere near me.

  I was struggling with my bag, trying to find my poncho, my hair plastered to my head, blinking away the drops that were making it hard to see.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to have rain,” I called back to him.

  “We weren’t,” his body was close enough to touch mine, his hand on my elbow. “This isn’t the right time of year for rain like this.”

  It was dark and I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear something I didn’t like in his voice.

  Something like worry. Something I had never heard from him before.

  “We have to round up the cadets, and get them somewhere else.”

  In the darkness and the rain, I could see him turn slowly in a small circle, like he was trying to intuit where that space we could take them might be.

  “Where should we take them?” I asked.

  He was looking up, even further up from where we were.

  “I don’t think we have a choice. We need to get somewhere flatter, drier, before this ravine becomes a raging river. And these trees…Dammit.”

  He didn’t need to go on. We weren’t supposed to be having a storm, but that didn’t matter, because we were.

  And, though he was new in town, he seemed to know that when we did get storms like this — they were a big deal.

  He was sliding down the hill toward the cadets. I could hear the mud splattering, his boots sticking as he went, and I realized I hadn’t yet put mine on.

  He was, apparently, the kind of man who slept with his boots on. I didn’t actually think those men existed, but Matthews was here to prove me wrong.

  Another thunderous boom sounded overhead, and it felt like we might as well be in the middle of an open field instead of under the cover of the woods. I could hear Matthews down below, pulling the cadets together, listing off what they should grab, and what they should bring.<
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  I heard him say three times it wasn’t a drill.

  While he did that I hurried into my clothing. It was soaking wet by the time I finished putting it on, but I pulled the emergency poncho I had in my pack over my head, hoping it would protect our supplies, our phones, and radios, because once the worst of the storm cleared we were going to have to phone in our location and that we were okay. The base would be waiting to hear from us.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” I heard him calling as he came back up the hill toward me, more slowly than he had gone down.

  The water was coming down hard and fast, sitting on top of the ground, making everything slick and loose, waiting for one wrong step, one wrong footfall to pull free an entire mountain side.

  He had been right. We needed to get out of there. And we couldn’t take our time.

  The cadets were tuned into his urgency, and they were scrambling along behind him, sticking in their little groups, keeping count of one another.

  Trial by fire. It was how I had learned on the emergency room floor of the hospital, too.

  He stopped near me long enough to pick up his belongings and then he careened along up the hill.

  I waited for the cadets to pass, bringing up the rear. As the second most senior leader, it was where I belonged, ready to scoop up anyone who might fall behind, who needed the extra help. If that person was me, I was going to be in some serious trouble.

  We were scaling a steep part of the cliff, going wherever it was Matthews seemed to think we needed to go, when one of the cadets near him lost his balance and reached for a tree.

  We’d gone over it a dozen times, but it’s always different in the moment, which is why we do the damn simulations in the first place. It’s hard to override your instinct with what you’ve learned.

  He reached for a tree, which would have been fine two hours earlier, but the whole damn thing came up by its roots sending him flying backwards into the other cadets.

  It was like watching in slow motion, his vague, dark form clutching a tree trunk and free falling, getting ready to go flying over the edge of the cliff side. It was impossible to see how far the cliff dropped or into what.

  I was moving toward him as the cadets scattered the best they could, some of them losing their footing and crashing to the ground, others standing stock still lost in the horror in front of them.

  I never saw him move, but suddenly, Matthews was right next to the cadet, reaching for him, pulling him back and spinning, so the cadet was catapulted back toward the others.

  It was like a bad frame in a bowling game, the one who’d fallen crashing into the others until they were littered on the mountain side like so many upset pins.

  It was great news for the cadet.

  But not so great for Matthews who couldn’t change his trajectory in time to avoid slamming into a large tree.

  This one didn’t give way beneath the assault.

  I heard the crack, and the sound of the air escaping Matthews.

  And then quiet.

  The worst kind of quiet.

  I was scrambling toward where he lay at the bottom of the tree, the cadets still righting themselves.

  “Keep moving!” I yelled to them. “Get up that hill, and for Christ’s sake, do not grab on to anything. Assume nothing will keep your ass from falling. Keep your center of gravity low.”

  They grumbled their responses, or didn’t bother to respond at all, I wasn’t sure, because I was already focusing on Matthews.

  “Doing alright, soldier?” I asked, like I’d asked countless men and women who’d ended up on a gurney with me, some out in the field, some in the E.R., some in the comfort of an exam room.

  Up close I could hear him breathing right away, even though I couldn’t see him well enough in the dark to determine what had been hurt.

  That was alright, though, because any doctor worth her salt wasn’t going to be using her eyes anyway.

  First I snatched his pulse, which was elevated, but considering the strain we’d been under, appropriate. I leaned over him, trying to hear his breath sound between the roar of the rain, one hand on his chest, feeling for its rise and fall.

  “Good, good,” I murmured, waiting for him to regain enough of his breath that he could talk to me about what he’d hurt.

  He wasn’t struggling to get up, yet, and that was my biggest hint that he had, in fact, hurt something.

  Chad Matthews wasn’t the type to let a little fall keep him down. If he was still down, it wasn’t good.

  I continued to run my hands over his body, staring with his left shoulder, speaking to him the whole time.

  “Where does it hurt?” I asked, working my way down to the left wrist before moving back up and to the right side of the body.

  That was where I found the first break, confirmed by the malalignment and the sharp intake of breath.

  “Collarbone,” I said in sympathy, continuing to gently palpate the shoulder. It was probably the point of impact, so most of the injuries would be concentrated to that area.

  There was nothing we were going to be able to do for the collarbone. Not here. When we got to where we needed to be I could stabilize it the best I could, but otherwise he was going to be uncomfortable until we could get him back to base and some good painkillers in his system.

  The shoulder wasn’t going to be able to wait, though.

  “Christ,” I finally heard him mutter.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, not sure if he was even going to be able to hear me, before collecting his arm in mine, bracing myself against the tree he had connected so soundly with in the first place.

  I counted down in my head, because I didn’t want him to know it was coming. And then, with a quick jerk upward, I slammed most of my bodyweight into him, feeling the resistance and then the give as the shoulder popped back into its place.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I murmured again, knowing it must be hurting like hell. “Think you can get up?”

  “Of course I can get up,” he said indignantly, and I couldn’t help but feel a little tweak of relief at his words. “Alright, then, I’ve sent the others on ahead. We’ll meet them at the top.”

  I reached for his hand — his good one — and helped tug him to his feet, standing close to make sure he wasn’t going to topple over from pain or the change in elevation.

  I could see his vague, dark outline, the injured side of his body stiff, his breathing more rapid than it should be.

  The rain was still coming down. Hard.

  An injury to the upper body is something you can’t really appreciate until you experience it yourself. It’s hard to imagine how connected it is to the rest of your body, just how much it’s going to impede every one of your movements.

  Until you’re struggling with one. Worse, when you’re trying to haul yourself up a mountain, working against gravity and nature.

  It was slow going, to say the least.

  We climbed in silence, me mostly trying to keep tabs on his breathing while trying not to fall flat on my face.

  I let him lead, which I was sure suited his ego. He didn’t need to know I wanted to be back there in case he lost his balance or passed out and toppled backward. He outweighed me by a good hundred pounds, so I didn’t anticipate being able to stop his fall, but maybe I would at least bring that fall to an end, and not have him somersaulting down to the bottom of the mountain.

  I didn’t even want to think about that.

  We’d long ago lost sight of the cadets — and I was hoping they were going to make it to the top, that they would somehow know exactly where Matthews had planned on taking them in the first place. I prayed we weren’t going to become separated out here — when we rounded a sharp curve in our makeshift path.

  It happened suddenly. So suddenly, it was like I didn’t know it was happening at all, until it already had. The earth gave out beneath us, and we both started to fall, feet first along the side of the mountain, our feet scrambling, looking for purchase.

&
nbsp; “Cover your face, watch your head,” I heard Matthews call, and I did as I was told, listening to him grunt as he tried to protect himself as well.

  We managed to come to a stop when we tumbled into an outcropping of rock, where things seemed to level out, where we were able to rely on more than just dirt for purchase.

  I would have been happy to just sit there, on that little ledge, but we’d barely stopped at all before Matthews was beginning to pick his way down the side.

  “Can’t we just wait here?” I asked. There was no way we were going to catch up with the cadets now. We’d only get ourselves more lost if we tried. We’d be better off waiting it out, and starting fresh in the morning, when the rain had cleared and we had some visibility on our side.

  “Trust me,” he was saying, not pausing.

  I guess I didn’t have much of a choice, so I scooted over toward him, feeling like I was on a ledge, waiting for something else to happen, one more thing that was going to send me over the edge.

  I wasn’t a huge fan of dangling over the side of the mountain in the dark, but I felt Matthews snag my boot, sliding upward along my calf and guiding me toward the ground.

  Damned if I didn’t have to remind myself that it wasn’t the ideal time to be stirred by his touch, and that, just like when I’d been roaming my hands over his body, it had been merely a clinical exercise.

  Of course I had happened to notice how extremely sturdy and well-muscled his body was at that time, but it was still strictly clinical.

  I thudded to the ground next to him and realized we were in a shallow cave. Everything around us was damp, but we were out of the rain, sheltered just a shade from the wind.

  I peeled off my poncho first. It was covered in mud, torn and useless.

  I wish I could say it had at least done its job and kept the rest of me dry, but it hadn’t. I was soaking wet and muddy.

  And then I started to shake.

  It was just a tremor at first, but then it was the real deal, head to toe quaking.

  I thought I was never going to stop.

  Matthews clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Come on, now, soldier,” he said, calling me something other than Doctor for the first time, bringing to mind the words I had said to him not too long ago — even though it felt like hours ago now. “You’ve got this.”