by Matt Rogers
‘How many “real” boys you got left?’
‘Just you.’
‘Otis? Dom? Zach? Troy?’
‘They ain’t shit to me.’
Ronan understood. He still hung around with them when he wasn’t paralysed in bed, because who the hell else was he going to hang around with, and they all stayed in contact with Brad, but it wasn’t the same as the bond the big man shared with Ronan. Otis was the only one who matched their intellect, but he was a full-blown psycho. Sure, the three of them had committed the very same atrocities, but Otis got off on it. To him it wasn’t a philosophical and moral test like it was for them.
Brad said, ‘Listen, Ronan. Listen good. I’m in the thick of it right now. Beat up, worn down, fucking exhausted. I got shot last week. Bullet grazed my shoulder, could’ve taken the whole arm off if I was standing an inch to the left. Christ, I made him pay for that…’
‘You stay on your toes. Don’t want you getting killed, going radio silent on me.’
‘Good. You get it. That’s how I feel about you.’
‘Me?’ Ronan paused. ‘The fuck you talking about?’
‘You grit your teeth and deal with whatever comes your way and hang the fuck in there until I get back. Okay? You’re my boy. We’ve been through it all. I’m not getting back and paying you a visit at the cemetery. You got me?’
‘Yeah. Whatever, man. I got you. But I’m telling you, you ain’t gotta worry about any of that…’
‘Alright,’ Brad said, but his tone said, Whatever you say. ‘Pump some iron and take some ’roids — whatever you can get your hands on — and get that testosterone flowing again. Eat good, go to bed early, get up early. It won’t feel good short-term but it’ll pay off. Get yourself back in that animalistic state of mind. It’ll get you through the days that feel like pure shit.’
Ronan didn’t know what to say.
There was a muffled shout in the background of the call. Brad said, ‘Gotta go.’
The line died.
Ronan put the phone down, rolled over.
Went back to disturbed and turbid sleep.
He already knew he wouldn’t do anything that Brad had prescribed.
But somewhere within one of the bouts of pained wakefulness, he took the loaded revolver off the nightstand, putting it back in the drawer.
Not today.
45
Years passed that way.
Ronan’s life became a seesaw of shaky mental health. Of course, he’d never admit that, because he was a soldier, and soldiers could simply tough their way through anything that afflicted them.
They had to, or they wouldn’t call themselves soldiers.
Depression could be beaten into submission, like Brad suggested. Iron, steroids, good food. And there was every likelihood that would’ve actually helped. Maybe routine would’ve been good for him, pulled him out of the hole he kept falling back into, just the way Brad said.
As far as Ronan was concerned, Brad was a superhero. Still off fighting battles, still with his shit together. The big man never stopped calling, texting. Ronan always made sure to pick up the phone. He considered that an achievement in itself. In between the calls that proved to Brad he was still alive, still kicking, he drank and he lay in bed and occasionally he collected his small government checks — unofficial, of course — for taking care of the things in Afghanistan that America couldn’t put on the record.
He checked in sporadically with Dominic and Zach and Troy. Otis less so, because the psycho didn’t need reassurance. Ronan didn’t realise what he was doing in the moment, but upon reflection he understood he was keeping the susceptible ones on the leash. They were just as fucked up as he was, and no matter how bad he spiralled he could still manipulate them, convince them he was their only port of call in the entire world, the only one who still cared about them.
He figured he was doing it so they could one day do robberies.
He’d had the idea ever since he got back, in the early 2010s. Back then the squad spent all their time together, even after they were dissolved, unemployed. They plotted and schemed and cursed the government that had abandoned them. They came up with the vilest insults they could think of for a general population they considered weak, overfed, sedentary. Like, We were overseas fighting for these people? So they envisioned putting their skills to use, keeping themselves sharp by coordinating kidnappings and robbing men with gross sums of money they hadn’t justly earned. They never went through with it, though.
Then they started to figure out they had in fact been overseas fighting for faceless suits, not the civilian population they hated, and they started drinking so they didn’t have to think about that.
They drifted.
Ronan spent the latter half of the 2010s in this fugue state. One morning in 2019, head pounding and extremities freezing from the poor circulation that accompanies chronic alcoholism, he took a phone call from Arnold.
He’d always kept in touch with the kid, who sure wasn’t a kid anymore.
Ronan mumbled, ‘Hey, man.’
‘What’s the deal?’ Arnold said, his voice high-pitched and fast-paced, always neurotic. ‘You just going to slowly give up on me after Afghanistan? It’s been two months since you last picked up, bro.’
‘After Afghanistan? We got back nearly ten years ago.’
‘Yeah. Right. Yeah. I appreciate it. It’s just…you know. Don’t have many friends in the office.’
‘Doesn’t seem like the sort of job where you would.’
Arnold was a hacker, a digital intelligence specialist. He’d been with a classified division of the CIA when Ronan was on the ground in the Valley of Death, but there was no telling where the kid was now.
Stop calling him that, Ronan told himself. He’s got to be, what, thirty-five now?
Arnold was in his early twenties, freshly poached from MIT’s STEM program, when he used to feed Ronan and his squad real-time intel on what they’d be walking into on the ground. An intermediary usually took care of that, some seasoned handler who could translate what the socially awkward tech wizards babbled to them, but Arnold was a good communicator and he’d been given massive responsibility to speak directly to certain black-ops units.
Ronan had often delved into long conversations with the kid, late at night in the Korangal Valley when it was the middle of the day in Washington. He couldn’t help it. It was lonely in the Valley of Death.
Ever since returning to U.S. soil, Arnold had called and texted like a needy puppy, even when it was unequivocally clear that Ronan had no interest in maintaining a connection.
Now, Ronan’s curiosity piqued. ‘Where is your office?’
‘I’m still in D.C. Not with CIA anymore, though. Haven’t been for years.’ The last part was snide, a way of saying, About time you showed some interest.
Ronan figured he’d appease Arnold. He didn’t have anything to do that day besides lie in bed. Much the same as each of the last thousand days. ‘Moving on up in the world, huh? What’s it like?’
‘Not sure if “up” is the way to put it. More like down, but in all the right ways. Into the shadows. I’m doing all the same things, only at a higher level. And work? It’s alright. Same as it’s always been. I’m not the one taking the risks, so what’s a bit of mental stress? Men like you do the groundwork. Real men.’
Fishing, Ronan thought. Fishing for compliments, day in, day out.
Pretty pathetic considering Ronan had just as few friends, but he’d never been one to need human contact. Maybe Arnold did, and it consumed him that he couldn’t get it, even if he tried.
Again, Ronan appeased him. ‘You do good work, Arnold.’
Arnold ignored it, off on a tangent now. ‘There’s a guy where I work I’m trying to get to know. His name’s Connor. He’s a tech prodigy, like me. He’s about the age I was when I was put in touch with you boys in Korangal. Just a nervous young man. I want to guide him, show him what worked for me, but…I’m not good at approaching p
eople. I, uh, I don’t think he even knows I exist. I get cold feet every time I try to have a normal conversation that doesn’t involve work. You … got any advice?’
Ronan took stock of his surroundings, how little he’d done in the past decade. ‘I’m no expert, Arnold.’
‘Oh, come on. You were boots on ground. A hard charger. You can’t convince me you don’t know how to talk to people.’
‘I know how. I just don’t. I don’t like people.’
A pause as Arnold digested the revelation. It was probably the most he’d gotten out of Ronan since Afghanistan. ‘Well, then, it means a lot to me that you talk to me.’
‘I know.’
‘You doing okay?’
‘Yeah, Arnold. Doing just fine.’
‘Well, uh, that’s good. Keep it up.’
‘This Connor guy,’ Ronan said. ‘He got many friends?’
‘Nah. He’s like me.’
‘Then talk to him. Two loners might be good for each other.’
‘Yeah. Thanks, man.’
It was basic, soulless, copy-paste advice, but it meant more to Arnold that Ronan had made the effort to suggest it.
The conversation fizzled out, and Ronan went back to drinking and sleeping in a room he kept dark twenty-four-seven. Sometimes he wished that villager had taken both his eyes, so it could be dark all the time.
A couple of years after that, shit hit the fan.
46
After more than a decade of brutalising his body, Ronan somehow hadn’t put on weight.
He chalked it up to his organs being in a constant state of survival, his heart pumping so hard from all the drinking and smoking that he burned more than enough calories just lying in bed, guzzling Jack. His one defining achievement of these past two years was buying a heavy bag, stringing it up in the corner of his tiny apartment and hammering it when he got hammered.
He collected his pension, drank himself into a stupor, and wailed on the bag until his knuckles and shins bled. Sometimes he passed out underneath the bag, lying in droplets of his own blood, saliva leaking from his mouth until he resurfaced the next morning in pain.
But Brad kept calling, so the gun stayed in its drawer.
Then, one day in a sea of days that constituted his agonising existence, a call roused him from an afternoon nap.
Arnold.
It was the first time he’d called in nearly a year.
Eyes bloodshot and watering, he answered with a growl. ‘Ain’t heard from you in a while.’
‘Listen, man,’ Arnold said, falling back into conversation like they’d never stopped. ‘I need your help.’
Ronan shifted around on loose bedsheets stained with sweat. ‘Listen, kid. I’m not in a position to help. Trust me.’
‘Just advice,’ Arnold said. ‘Please. Just advice.’
Ronan snorted, held one nostril and jettisoned a glob of snot onto the floor beside the bed. ‘Alright. Go.’
‘You won’t remember this. Uh … where do I start? You’re gonna think this is so stupid.’
Ronan’s head was clearer. He had the capacity for a little more leeway. ‘Just talk to me. Don’t overthink it.’
‘I called you two years back. About maybe making a friend at work. The kid’s name was Connor. You told me to just approach him, and, uh…well, I never did. And for the last couple months I’ve been beating myself up about that, because I could see him going downhill. He was getting quieter, more withdrawn. And he kept jumping whenever someone said hello, like he’d got a small electric shock or something. I think either the social isolation got to him, like it very well could’ve gotten to me … or he fell in with the wrong crowd. I don’t know…’
‘Arnold,’ Ronan said, cutting him off. ‘You’re a grown man, for fuck’s sake. Why are you talking to me about this? Maybe I didn’t make myself clear a couple years ago. I don’t care about your office politics or your social life.’
‘No, I get that,’ Arnold babbled. ‘I do. I really do. Which is why I never brought it up again. But … ah, I’ll just say it.’ A pause. ‘Connor’s gone.’
‘What?’
‘He disappeared. It wasn’t that he got moved to another position, or quit. One evening he left work and the next morning before I got there — at five a.m., mind you — his office was wiped, every trace of his existence removed. So I stormed into my superior’s office because I thought maybe they’d bullied him out of the role, or said something harsh that broke him mentally. I know first-hand how stressful and demanding this job is. I think it was all of my own grievances with myself coming out. I got angry ’cause I knew I could have maybe prevented this if I just got to know him, gave him someone to talk to, an outlet. Like what you are for me.’
Ronan didn’t say anything.
Arnold continued. ‘So I stormed in there and asked loudly about Connor and my boss looked like he’d seen a ghost and stood up and slammed the door. Told me if I made a big deal out of this, there’d be serious consequences. I think he thought I was closer to Connor than I actually was, when in reality I’d barely ever talked to the kid. He seemed to think I already knew whatever it was they were hiding. He said, yes, it’s unfortunate, but it’s what happens sometimes. He said Connor was caught up in some shit connected to that cult in Wyoming. You remember that?’
Ronan vaguely recalled a news story. Mother Liberty? He’d been blind drunk and exhausted from a bag session when he’d seen it.
Arnold said, ‘I think my bosses killed him. And my brain’s telling me it’s my fault. What should I do?’
‘Kid.’
Arnold finally shut up.
Ronan said, ‘I honestly don’t care.’
Silence.
Ronan said, ‘Anything else you want to tell me about?’
‘No.’
‘Alright. Chat later.’
He hung up and dropped the phone. Shook his head as he laughed to himself. Bitter laughter.
He couldn’t muster the willpower to stop drinking for an hour, and Arnold thought he could provide advice about missing friends.
Ironically, Ronan realised, dealing with missing friends was perhaps his only area of expertise these days, maybe besides forcing himself not to care about the villagers he’d murdered. Turned out that old military buddies from before the black-ops days didn’t want to take your calls when they knew you were a raging drunk. And there was fat chance he could make new friends, not now, after such a bad decade.
Bad was an understatement.
But there was a silver lining.
He figured he’d given Arnold the straw that broke the camel’s back, and that he would no longer be forced to bear answering any more calls from the misconceived hacker. Now they’d stop for good, and he could finally drift away from the obligation, only taking calls from Brad, which came regular as clockwork, no matter where in the world the man was. That would hopefully get Ronan through the rest of his miserable life. His final lifeline to the outside world.
The next day, Brad stopped calling.
47
A week after Arnold’s last call, Ronan sat on the floor at the end of his bed, staring at the phone.
The hand he clutched it with shook uncontrollably.
He hadn’t sipped any Jack in over two hours, and already its absence was noticeable. Two hours was a record for the year. Obviously he couldn’t drink in his sleep, but he always took a big sip the moment his eyes opened and then every twenty to thirty minutes like clockwork until he closed them again at night. It was a small miracle he was still alive.
He was alive, and he felt like shit, and he was scared.
Brad hadn’t called the whole week.
Brad never missed a scheduled call. Not once. The check-ins were vital, to make sure Ronan was still breathing. And none of Brad’s old numbers were picking up, which made sense, but it was inconceivable that he’d go radio silent like this.
A week without talking to a soul besides the mumbled ‘Hey,’ to the checkout girl at the g
rocery store was already making Ronan go insane. He didn’t want to think what another week might be like. What if Brad had been killed or wounded overseas? It would mean Ronan was looking at the rest of his life without human contact. He didn’t want new friends. He wanted the comfort and predictability of Brad’s reassurances. Maybe that was pathetic, but whatever. His life was pathetic. He was still tough — that shit sticks to your soul — but that was maybe the only reason his body was hanging in there, well past what its expiration date should have been.
He sat there, rocking back and forth, knowing what he needed to do but unable to find the courage to do it.
Eventually he relented as the desperation intensified.
He called Arnold.
The dial tone went on forever and Ronan assumed he’d severed anything meaningful between them with that last call. He’d been furiously hungover. He hadn’t been himself. Surely—
Arnold answered with a curt, ‘Yeah?’
‘Listen,’ Ronan said, in a quieter voice than he’d maybe ever used. ‘I’m an asshole, right? I’m a fucking raging hypocritical asshole, and I’m a drunk, and a recluse. I don’t go outside and I don’t have friends and I drink and I punch a bag. That’s all I do. And this is the first time I’ve ever admitted it out loud. So can you understand why I’ve been such an asshole to you?’
Silence.
Then, ‘Yeah, I can.’
Ronan said, ‘I got a missing friend, too.’
‘Would that be Brad Forrest?’
Ronan froze. ‘What the hell?’
‘He’s from your unit. From the Valley of Death. Where you and I first forged our … well, I was going to say “bond,” but you obviously never saw it as that.’
‘I’m sorry, okay?’ Ronan growled. ‘I’m sorry. But this is important. You knew Brad was the one I’d be asking about. So you already know something. Which can’t be good news. Right?’
‘Yeah,’ Arnold said. ‘It’s not good news. He’s dead.’