War Stories

by Andrew Liptak

  I’ll never feel that way again.

  He stood next to her for a moment, not saying anything, just letting Pia stare for as long as she needed. When she finally looked away, he stuck out a hand.

  “Jim Rogers. Doctor Chu said you needed to talk to someone.”

  Pia took his hand, gave it a brief squeeze, then quickly released it. She didn’t like for people to touch her any more. “You don’t look like a mind bender.”

  “I’m a chaplain.”

  “You don’t look like one of them either.”

  He nodded but kept his gaze on the ocean before them. “Been one for the last eighteen or so years. Last tour was as a battlefield chaplain. New Texas to be exact. Want to go for a walk?”

  Rather than answer, Pia began walking along the shoreline, carefully keeping her sandal–clad feet clear of the water surges. The chaplain walked alongside her, his bare feet as often in the water as not. They moved in silence for several minutes, with Pia occasionally staring at him, and the chaplain leaning over to pick up a seashell and smile before putting it back.

  “You said you fought on New Texas.”

  “Chaplains don’t fight. Leastwise not how you Marines do. But yes, I was on the battlefront of New Texas. New Austen to be exact.”

  Pia sucked in a breath as visions of slaughtered Marines and feasting cans danced before her eyes. She banished her memories as quickly as she could.

  “How are you so normal?”

  The chaplain raised a blonde eyebrow and looked down at his garish clothes.

  “You know what I mean. It’s like the war is over for you.” Pia brushed her hand over her brown eyes. “I’m afraid it won’t ever be over for me. I just see New Austin in my head all the time, over and over and over again.”

  “That’s not what you’re really afraid of, though, is it? The memories. Those will fade.” The chaplain still didn’t meet her gaze, but there was a kind, understanding smile on his face. She realized that she could tell him anything. He was a stranger; he hadn’t known her from before. Therefore, he was safe.

  “No, it’s not.” She let her arm drop, skimming the side of her white cotton cover–up. “Facing the war was surprisingly easy. Often heartbreaking, given what my job was, but I had good Marines by my side. I knew what to do. What was expected of me.”

  She placed a fingertip on the dark, exposed skin of her sternum and took a deep breath. “The problem is I don’t know who I am any more. Or rather, I know, but I don’t recognize me. No one does.” Pia shook her head. “I keep waiting to go back to the old me. The always–chipper, happy–go–lucky me. It hasn’t happened yet. I mean, I say I’m fine because maybe if I say it enough it will be true. But it’s not true. I’m not fine.”

  She stopped walking and looked up at the chaplain, brown eyes meeting his—kind, understanding, blue. “So I guess what I want to know is when will it happen. When will I be me again? When will I feel right inside?”

  10 months ago

  The plasma rifles fired over and over again, nearly drowning out of the roar of the cans.

  “Time’s up, Gunny,” Pia yelled into her mic. “Where are you guys? We need to leave!”

  A can made it past the rifles and threw itself against the hull of the shuttle. Pia winced—their claws were sharp enough to shred through the hull, which meant they wouldn’t be spaceworthy if she didn’t act fast.

  “On our way back, Skipper,” Doc Kilmer huffed.

  Pia hopped out of her seat and checked the charge on her plasma rifle.

  “Ma’am, what are you doing?” Angel looked out from under her sweat–soaked cap, red hair plastered to her forehead and neck, tired green eyes betraying their worry.

  “I’m not going to let the cans tear my ship apart.” It was logical, really. Had to be done; no time for thought. No time for worry. No time for fear. “Go through take–off checks and when I say go, you go, even if I’m not on board.”

  “Ma’am…?”

  “I don’t have time to argue. Do it.” Pia glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see Angel’s nod, then leapt down the ladder well to the cargo hold behind. Lingo had a look of manic glee as he picked off the cans when they crested the ridge.

  “Velazquez, with me.” Pia heard the gunner shoulder her rifle and follow her down the ramp and outside. “You take the right, I’ll take the left. Don’t let them near the hull.”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper!” Corporal Velazquez grinned broadly, her easy smile confidant and excited. She ducked around the corner, already firing her rifle.

  Pia barely cleared the turn when a can was on her. She could smell its fetid breath wash over her face, and a dribble of foamy saliva dripped onto her cheek. It didn’t attack, and she realized the beast was dead. As she rolled it off of her she realized she’d shot it without thinking.

  Can I kill so easily now?

  “Skipper!”

  Pia whirled around and brought her plasma rifle up to bear and shot another can, hot on the tail of Doc Ski and Gunny, carrying a young Marine between them. His tan cammies were torn to bits but still managed to cling to his body. His head lolled to the side, and it was only when she saw the stark white of his eyes cracking open, so much in contrast to the blackness of his skin, that she realized he was still alive.

  “What are you doing out here, Skipper?” Gunny asked as he and Doc Ski hauled the Marine on board. He kept calling for someone named “Chesty.”

  “Saving your butt.” Pia took out another can that was trailing a skinny little black Labrador. She’d barely lowered her rifle when she felt herself get jerked backward and onto the ramp by the seat of her flight suit.

  “Yeah, but who’s gonna save yours?” Gunny Anderton reached past Pia and pulled a knife she hadn’t seen him throw from the body of a dead can. She hadn’t even heard the monster creeping up behind her. “Need you in one piece to fly us outta here, Skipper.”

  The sound of claws scrabbling across the ramp ended the conversation as Pia whirled, rifle brought up to bear. The scrawny lab hauled itself up the ramp, swept past Pia and the gunnery sergeant, and leapt into the injured Marine’s waiting arms. Pia watched as the Marine collapsed onto his litter, then looked around and counted her crew.

  “Where’s Kilmer?” But she knew even before she finished asking the question. Gunny shook his head and Doc Ski focused on stabilizing the injured Marine. Pia swallowed. Now was not the time to grieve.

  “Velazquez, get your butt over here. Time to go.” Pia felt the ramp under her rumble and begin to close.

  Angel’s voice piped over the comm, calm and steady. “Ma’am, the main body is here. We need to take off now.”

  “No, give Velazquez a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute. We don’t even have ten seconds.”

  The sound of another plasma rifle blasting shook the shuttle. Without looking, Pia knew Gunny Anderton had taken Camila’s gunner spot.

  “Velazquez!” Pia couldn’t leave her. Looking out the side port she saw that the gunner had foolishly gone up to the ridge to engage the herd. Pia couldn’t watch, nor could she look away. The ramp finished closing and Pia slipped down into the med bay. She pressed herself to another window and watched as Velazquez took out can after can, always with her easy smile on her heart–shaped face.

  Pia forced herself to her feet and launched herself up the ladder well onto the flight deck. If she could turn the shuttle to bring the forward cannons to bear, maybe, just maybe…

  But as she slammed into her seat and looked out the forward viewport she saw it was too late. Velasquez still had a smile on her heart–shaped face, but it was nowhere near the rest of her body.

  Pia couldn’t just leave a member of her crew behind. Marines didn’t leave Marines behind. Not ever, not—

  Angel’s hand came over hers and guided Pia to pushing the thrusters forward. Pia pulled back on the yoke and felt multiple shakes along the shuttle as the bodies of cans slammed into the hull.

  And t
hen it was quiet.

  Present

  “You are you now.” The chaplain’s voice was calm and soothing, the way the lapping waves were supposed to be. Pia wanted to punch him in the face. Instead she let a slow breath out and asked a question.

  “What do you mean I am me now?”

  “The old you is gone. The new you is here, and that’s just fine.” The chaplain stopped walking, and faced Pia. “The new you is wonderful. I think if you gave yourself a chance to get comfortable in your new skin, you’d see that.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, and for once Pia didn’t feel like flinching away. “There’s a lot to like about new you. Doctor Chu says you are more thoughtful and patient. In many ways you’re kinder, and you don’t worry about little things as much. He just wishes you could see how wonderful you are.”

  “I’m sure Mike said those things, but he’s just being nice. Like always. He’s always so nice.” Pia stepped away from the chaplain, needing the space.

  “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  Pia shook her head and then shrugged. “I’m just so temperamental now. I’m always angry.”

  The chaplain leaned over and scooped up a glistening green seashell from the pink sand.

  “You spent the better part of a year constantly worried about getting not just yourself but your Marines killed.” He brushed the sand off the delicate shell, which was the length and width of his index finger. “You have no idea how much stress and pressure that puts on a person. You need to release it, and that’s what you’ve been doing.” He took Pia’s hand and set the seashell inside. “This will pass. Accepting who you are now, instead of rejecting it, will help.”

  “Will I always feel like this?” Pia stared at the shell, unable to meet his eyes. Unable to let him see the tears forming at the corners of hers.

  He closed her fingers over the smooth surface of the green shell. “No, you’ll change in time. We all change in time. And that’s a good thing.”

  10 months ago

  They flew up through the COMFORT’s well deck, and Pia set down where the lineman indicated she should.

  “How’s he holding up?” Pia asked.

  “PFC Smith has been sedated and Chesty isn’t trying to bite my hand off anytime I get too near anymore.” Doc Ski’s voice sounded as exhausted as Pia felt.

  “Well, that’s something,” Pia said, more to herself, just as something to fill the void. Once all three struts were down and locked to the deck, she cleared Angel to lower the ramp.

  The ramp lowered, and Angel brought out the shut–down checklist. Pia shook her head.

  “Are we not shutting down, ma’am?”

  “I’m not.” Pia ran a steady hand over the yoke, feeling oddly calm. No doubt STC had more missions than crews. It felt selfish to shut down, and it felt good to be needed. “I know our crew day is up, but I also know that we can get extended six hours for surge ops if needed.” She met Angel’s eyes and gave a wan smile. “And I think it’s needed. Anyone who wants to leave, can. I won’t blame you and I won’t stop you. But I’m going back down.”

  As she knew they would be, her crew was with her.

  Always faithful, that was the Marine Corps for you.

  §

  Pia was sitting on the front steps again; only this time she twirled the green seashell in her hands. Mike sat down next to her. Not too close, but close enough to let her know he was there.

  He didn’t ask if she wanted to go inside.

  He didn’t ask if she was hungry.

  He didn’t ask if she wanted to go for a walk.

  He didn’t ask anything at all.

  She spun the shell around in her hands a few more times before finally laying her head on his shoulder.

  “I think I’m going to be okay.” Pia held out the seashell toward Mike.

  Plucking it from her, he laced his free fingers with hers.

  “I know.”

  Where We Would End a War

  F. Brett Cox

  WHEN AMANDA CAME HOME FROM the war, her family was there to greet her at the platform. She knew what to expect when she rematerialized, but she’d forgotten about the mortar–like chuff! chuff! chuff! as the others arrived after her. It didn’t scare her—she was beyond being scared by loud noises—but it added to her disorientation as she stumbled off the platform into her dad Ernie’s arms. Her grandmother Rosie and kid brother Larry rushed in to grab her as well. She could hear her dad Neal crying, but the thin skype almost got lost in the other families’ laughing and crying and shouting as their loved ones popped back home. Gramma Rosie smelled like her perfume and their kitchen, and Amanda held on tightest to her.

  All the way home Neal kept apologizing for not being able to be there in person, but the teardown in Indianapolis had come up at the last minute and, with the economy being what it was and all, he couldn’t afford to turn it down. Everything he did was for her and her brother. He hoped she understood. Ernie tried to reassure her that the light media presence at the platform was probably because her group was one of the last to get back and they’d moved on to the next cycle, you know how the nets are. It didn’t mean people didn’t care, because they did. Then he quit apologizing and just stared at her like she wasn’t real. From the back seat Gramma Rosie kept reaching up front to rub her shoulder. The car steered itself through the traffic even more smoothly than she remembered, almost as smoothly as the sensed–up transports outside of Cotabato City had dodged IEDs. Probably the same tech by now. Larry was playing a game in the back seat but she knew he was glad she was home.

  When they got back to the house, Amanda went straight up to her room. Gramma Rosie had told her in the car that her room was just as she left it, which was technically accurate. Nothing had been moved, nothing was missing. But when she had been there it had never been that neat, and when she had come from work or school it had never felt that empty, so it wasn’t just like she left it, not really.

  For the first week or so she slept in late every day. Ernie and Gramma Rosie were fine with that, and so was Neal when he skyped in from his next job in Ft. Wayne. Gramma Rosie kept saying she knew Amanda needed to catch up on her rest. That was true enough, but soon her days had more darkness than light. At night, when everyone else was asleep, all there was to do was watch stuff onscreen and there was nothing that she wanted to watch, which meant all there really was to do was think, and she didn’t want to do that. So she started setting her alarm again.

  Once she got back on schedule, she still mostly stayed at home but made a point to go out during the day, not just to get out of the house but also to try to get a sense of what she had come home to. Before she had left for the war she was in the same cycle as most people she knew. Get up, go to school, go to work, go out, come home, go to sleep, get up, do it again. Where she lived was just there and not anything to notice. Now she walked around the town and tried to notice things. While she was deployed she had had this recurrent dream where she was walking around the town and finding all sorts of new places that hadn’t been there before. In the town she returned to, there didn’t seem to be anything missing, but there was certainly nothing new. It didn’t feel any different than it had before, when she wasn’t noticing it.

  The closest thing to something new was the American Legion post. At some point while she was gone, the town had found the money to fix it up. Parts of it were shiny and parts were fake old–timey, but it was at least somewhere to go now that she was a veteran. There weren’t too many people there her age, mostly older folks who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, shooting pool, chugging beer, dancing on robotic limbs. There was one really old guy who supposedly had been in Vietnam. He had two robot legs but he mostly sat by the window and looked out at the town.

  One evening she found herself talking to a woman named Sally who didn’t look much older than Ernie but said she had done three tours in Afghanistan. She still had all her original limbs. Sally couldn’t get over the jaunting.

  “What’s it lik
e in between? Do you feel anything?”

  “No. You just stand there and they throw the switch and then you’re someplace else.” That wasn’t true. There was a split–second when you felt like you were leaving your body, like you were dying, and the first time that had happened was still the most terrifying thing she had ever experienced, way worse than anything she had encountered in the war. After a few times you got used to it. But she didn’t tell Sally that. She didn’t want to frighten Sally, but she didn’t want to reassure her either. Sally was just someone to talk to over a couple of beers. She didn’t know Sally, who shuddered and said, “Not me, sister,” and gulped down the rest of her beer.

  “Never say never. You know they’re starting to phase it in for civilian travel.”

  “Like I said, not me.”

  “They say it’ll help the economy and the climate. Less fuel. Less time.”

  “The climate was already fucked when I was your age. And time? Time for what?”

  Amanda couldn’t answer that one.

  “Besides, it was bad enough being back in the world just a couple of days after you’d been out in the shit for a year. It can’t help you guys any to be out in it and then back home just like that.” Sally snapped her fingers. “Turnaround in seconds, not days. How can that be any kind of advantage?”

  Would having a day of travel time have made the return any less jarring? Amanda decided it wouldn’t have, but she didn’t tell Sally that, either. Instead she ordered another round. She looked past Sally, who was already talking about something else, at two guys her own age who were at one of the tall tables that lined the wall. One of them was wearing a t–shirt that said, BOG? AIC. TMF!