Beyond the corpse lay Jaden, and Gartrell’s eyes burned with sudden tears when he saw the tiny boy. He lay on his back, his forehead pushed slightly inward; the back of his skull had been blown away. His cranium looked deflated, irregular beneath his beautiful hair. His alabaster skin was almost white through the NVGs, and his eyes were closed, as if he had fallen asleep. His lips were slightly parted, and Gartrell knew what the boy’s last words had been.
Momma…Momma…Momma…
Gartrell walked to the small corpse and sank to his knees beside it, his chest on fire. Tears streamed down his face as he picked up Jaden and held him close, ignoring the ropy mass of matter that dangled from behind the boy’s ears. He just held the body to him and wept, shutting out all else, tuning out the death and devastation that raged all around him.
And finally, even that came to an end. Gartrell became aware of someone talking to him, someone kneeling right next to him. A hand gripped his arm and shook him roughly, and Jaden’s head turned away from Gartrell’s chest. He fully saw the damage his round had done for the first time.
Dear God, you fucking cheat, you fucking piece of shit, how could you let this happen to someone who couldn’t even fucking understand what was going down?
“Hey guy-hey first sergeant, you all right?” Someone shook Gartrell again, and he slowly looked to his right. A young second lieutenant knelt beside him, peering at Gartrell through his own night vision goggles. His face covered with beard stubble and sweat-streaked grime. He clutched an M4 carbine against his chest. Behind him, another soldier stood. This one carried a bulky Squad Automatic Weapon, the M249 SAW. Gartrell looked around. More soldiers had taken defensive positions in the gloom. They carried a variety of weapons, all standard issue, nothing esoteric like his AA-12. These were regular Army soldiers, and from their shoulder patches they were with the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry). The platoon Gartrell had been trying to link up with. The lightfighters had finally arrived.
Two seconds after he had shot a small toddler named Jaden.
Two seconds.
The platoon commander was saying something else when Gartrell refocused on him. “Where the fuck were you?” he asked. His voice was tight and dry, as full of emotion as a desert was filled with water.
“What’s that, first sergeant?”
Gartrell didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He knew how to get a point across with screaming and yelling, and he reached inside himself and pulled it out one word at a time, nice and easy and full of barbs. “Where. The. Fuck. Were. You.”
The second lieutenant facing him got the message loud and clear, and he looked down at the tiny corpse in Gartrell’s lap as if for the first time. “Uh…this tunnel is blocked by a subway train…we had to move through the other tunnel…and then we, you know, we had to get set up. We had to protect ourselves too…”
Gartrell pushed Jaden’s body into the officer’s arms. The lightfighter recoiled and tried to pull away, but Gartrell’s hand lashed out and caught him behind the neck and held him in place. “You did a great job practicing force protection, lieutenant. Looks to me like all your guys made it. All the guys with the guns are still standing, and zed’s down for the count. But look down. Look down at this four-year-old boy and ask yourself: should I have moved a bit faster?”
“I don’t need this shit from you-!”
“Shut up, butter bars.” Gartrell rose to his feet and glared down at the lieutenant through his night vision goggles. “Look down at that boy. Remind yourself who you are, what you do, and who you’re supposed to fucking protect.” He looked up at the rest of the soldiers and found none of them could withstand the weight of his gaze; they all looked away and concentrated on their prearranged fire lanes. Gartrell looked down as the lieutenant gently placed Jaden’s body on the railroad ties that connected the rails and rose to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” was all he said.
“Not interested. Give me a weapon, lieutenant.”
“Why?”
Gartrell looked past the lieutenant’s shoulder as the troops arrayed to their south stirred uneasily. In the distance, the moans of the dead echoed in the subway tunnel.
“Because the dead are coming, lieutenant. And they’re hungry. They’re always, always hungry.”
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-e8caa4-a57a-4547-2bb1-759f-9bcf-4fc0b8
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 23.05.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.52, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.3 software
Document authors :
Knight, Stephen
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Left With The Dead Page 11