Now, in the night, we have been taking it in turns to sleep and to keep watch. Exhaustion is tearing at our minds, stealing away great chunks of reality, and replacing it with a nightmarish horror in which my friend is dead. Because it was Brian who triggered the IEDs. I am convinced he did it to save our lives.
We did not bury Brian. Although I searched, I found nothing of him to place in a grave.
By the time we finished with the burials and tending to the survivors, evening was upon us. It was too late for the helicopter. First light tomorrow, the pilot promised. This meant we had to spend the longest night of our lives surrounded by the dead and the bereaved.
Now the survivors are mostly sleeping in the fuselage, although occasional cries of terror and sobs of grief reach us outside. It has stopped raining, but everything is wet. Our clothes are soaked all the way to the skin.
“He asked me the same question, Corporal Gabriel,” says the captain. “Asked me often. It was a trick question, you realise that?”
“I do, because he spoilt it by giving me the punchline,” I say. “He always did that. He told me we don’t make the decision at all.”
Chandler nods. I notice a streak of blood beneath his ear. It is a horizontal streak. We had collected rainwater and done our best to wash the blood and fragments of bone from our faces. But neither of us had done a very good job. It is Brian’s blood; I am sure of it.
“He was wrong about that,” says Chandler. “We do make the decision. Or we made it. Many years ago. Because the decision to kill is a single decision for people like us. It starts as a realisation. Perhaps you were little more than a child when you realised you had it in you. The army sees it in us. They take advantage of it. Because the journey from that realisation to the decision to kill is a short one.”
“If I didn’t know you better, Captain, I would think you are criticising our masters.”
“It’s an observation, Corporal, not a criticism.”
“And a single decision means we cannot change our minds?”
“It does.”
“Did you explain that to Brian? To Corporal Starck? That he had made the decision only once?”
Captain Chandler smiles. A tightening of the lips into a straight line. No teeth, but a glint in the eyes.
“He called it bullshit,” says Chandler. “He lived in the hope, I believe, that he would change the course of his life. Refused to accept that people like us cannot change. We lost a good man today. A good soldier, and a good man.”
“And a good friend,” I say.
Chandler nods. He turns to me, and his grey eyes glint in the darkness.
“You know his fiancée, don’t you?”
“Robyn,” I say, and nod.
“She will need your support. He was a good man, and she could see the goodness in him. Do you think it was her who inspired all those foolish ideas in him? Made him think he could change?”
“I think so,” I say. “She has a lot of spirit and told us both that we are little more than weapons in the hands of our masters. That’s why he kept going on about it.”
We sit in silence for several minutes. One of the survivors in the fuselage is moaning, a low keening sound, like the underscore to all the pain in the world.
“And what did you say to that, Corporal Gabriel?” says Chandler.
“I told her I choose not to believe that, Captain. I am more than a killer for hire or a weapon in the hands of my masters. I can make the decision to change my life.”
“Good for you, Corporal,” says the captain. “A good soldier is indeed so much more than that.”
There had been only one occasion I saw Robyn after Brian’s death. She was wearing black, her tear-stained eyes hidden behind dark glasses. She turned to me, after the prayers had been said, the hymns had been sung, and I saw myself reflected in her glasses, above her damp cheeks.
“Nothing will be the same,” she said. A beautiful voice, low-toned and calm.
“Nothing,” I agreed.
Robyn watched Brian’s parents walk down the hill, supported by friends, on the way to the wake. A gust of wind tossed a handful of leaves over the gravestone they had placed in their village graveyard. I knew there was nothing beneath the gravestone. We had brought nothing of Brian back with us, except our memories. Robyn turned back to me.
“What will you do?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I am at the mercy of my masters,” I said.
Robyn raised her glasses from her eyes, so that I could see the scorn in them. She had very dark eyes, almost black, and the edges were red from crying. She said nothing, but looked at me as if she expected me to say something.
I said nothing.
Robyn nodded, lowered her glasses, and turned to follow Brian’s parents down the hill to their small house in the village.
I lingered beside the grave. I wanted a moment alone with my friend, even though his body was not there. I felt I needed to make a decision. The same decision made by my friend. The decision to stop doing what I was doing and to change my life.
But he was not here to help me make it. All I had to help me was a gravestone, a blustery wind, and my memories.
Keep Reading
The story has only just started …
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