John took a deep breath and exhaled. He felt better. A smile grew on his face. “Fuck you all.” The smile grew wider, and he began to laugh. He laughed louder and louder, his body shaking. He threw his head back and laughed to the ceiling. He laughed and laughed, feeling the release of tension, a heaviness leaving this body until finally, the laughter stopped. He lowered his head, catching his breath, and looked toward the shadowy figure standing near the door. He hadn’t moved.
John closed his eyes, and his chin dropped to his chest. He was exhausted. All he wanted to do was sleep. A noise caught his attention, and he lifted his head and opened his eyes to see the man walking out the door. John watched the door close behind him and closed his eyes again. A moment later, John heard the door open, someone walked in and turned off the light before walking out.
94
Hours passed, John didn’t know how long. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his fitful sleep plagued with the faces of Abu Mujahid and the young boy, Karam.
He had lost all feeling in his arms and his buttocks. His mouth was dry, and he had long ago given up trying to control his bladder, feeling great relief as he urinated where he sat.
In one dream, he saw the face of Charlotte smiling at him and woke up weeping, tears running down his face. Why had his life been like this? When he was young, he had so many dreams for the future, so much hope, yet nothing had turned out the way he had imagined. There had been moments of happiness, of love, but they had been canceled out by great sorrow, loss, and hatred. What was the point? How did people like Mansur seem so calm and content? Why did he have to suffer so much?
John drifted back into sleep and was woken sometime later by someone walking into the room. By the time he remembered where he was, the person had already moved behind him, pulled a hood over his head, and exited the room.
Fuck. Finally? An execution in some godforsaken hellhole that no-one in the rest of the world really cared about? An image of Karam flashed before his eyes—the young boy standing in the field, firing his AK47, his mouth open in a defiant yell, while John cowered behind the pickup. John lifted his chin. If he was going to die, he would die like the young boy—brave and defiant to the end.
He heard the door open and footsteps approaching. Arms grabbed him from both sides and lifted him to his feet. He gasped as the blood rushed back to his arms and legs, his limbs tingling and spasming. He forced himself to stand straight and held his head high. Pushed forward, he stumbled, the hands catching him and guiding him out the door. He was marched along, half-carried down some steps, then lifted into a vehicle and dumped on his side onto a hard-ridged metal floor. Doors were closed, then he heard the rumble of an engine, and the vehicle moved off.
John tried to focus on the sensations, the direction of travel, how many turns, and in what direction, but the journey went on too long, and he gave up. Again, he drifted in and out of consciousness, waking now and then as the vehicle jolted and bumped over rough surfaces. Sometime later, he sensed the vehicle slowing, then stop. He heard shouting outside, then the vehicle moved off again. Eventually, John had no idea when, the hood and sleep deprivation robbing him of all sense of space and time, the vehicle stopped. He heard doors slam, then there was silence. He drifted off again.
After a while, he heard the doors opening, and someone grabbed his feet and pulled him backward. He felt them hang out into space, then someone grabbed him by the arms and eased him out, his feet touching the ground. He struggled to stand upright, again the blood rushing to his legs, his limbs tingling with pins and needles. He remembered Karam and straightened, pushed his shoulders back, and held his head up high.
The hands under each arm turned him around and marched him for what felt like a couple hundred meters, up some steps, and into a building. Then the hands pushed him to a kneeling position on the ground. This was it… the end. Despite the hood, John closed his eyes, the act giving him some peace, and took a deep breath. His heart was racing, and he fought to bring it under control—deep breath in, deep breath out, five seconds in, five seconds out.
He thought back over his life. Would he have done anything differently? No, he had no regrets. He had done what he had done, and he still felt it was right. He had loved and lost but had lived a full life. Everyone he had killed had deserved it. There was nothing gratuitous. He had done what had needed to be done.
He heard footsteps, then from behind, he felt fingers tugging at his hood. It was
