Dwelling (2 page)

Then he pictured his childhood friends, huddled together in Bobby’s clubhouse, reading comics and bullshitting. Other boys might have found it odd to have a girl in their midst, but Maggie had never felt like a girl, not in the beginning.

She most certainly did not act like a girl…well, not until high school
, he recalled.
Not until the group dynamic marched into that precarious world of adolescence.
God, it sucked being a teenager!
Pimples. Mood swings. Morning wood. And to top it off,
Ricky had confessed his love, like the knob he is, and asked Mags to the…God, what was it?
Spring Formal
Dance!
The two have been nauseatingly inseparable ever since.

Johnathan leaned back in the turret, boots crossed, thumbs hitched in the loose straps of his ammo pouches, and letting the Rip It
Ricky had handed him rejuvenate his tired mind. The streets had grown quiet, painfully so. An uncomfortable miserable silence crept in his bones, ringing cold and hollow, pulling on his heart with a dead weight.

Strange
.

There were no more cars passing on the road. No foot traffic. No pedestrians. No little brown Iraqi policemen. No peddlers of horribly made knockoffs. No dogs or dirty children chasing them into alleyways. There was no one. Nothing. Only the yellow and eerily silent dust that constantly fell and covered everything like toxic snow. Even radio chatter seemed to have dwindled.

“Something’s wrong,” whispered Johnathan, as if to confirm with his conscious mind what his gut was sensing.

“What’s that?” asked Ricky.

“Something’s wrong,” called Johnathan. “It’s quiet. Really quiet.”

Ricky grunted. “Nothing on the radio.” He clicked the hand-held and signaled the other four Humvees in the convoy. Pruneda’s team on the east-end, Mathews’ up front, and Zack Mullins’, who everyone called Pickles—long story—next to them on the west-end. All reported back the same strange lull in traffic, but nothing else.

“7-bravo, this is 7-bravo-delta, over,” radioed Ricky.

“Go ahead, 7-delta,” crackled Cobbett over the horn.

“7-bravo, it’s getting mighty quiet out here. Over.”

“And? Over.”

“Bad vibes, over.”

“Roger. Sit tight. We’re about to Charlie Mike. Copy?”

“Roger that. Out.” Ricky hung the radio mike on its sling. “Sit tight, buddy. We’re about to dibby outta here,” he shouted up into the turret.

Johnathan nodded uncomfortably. His gaze remained on the strange stillness surrounding the Al-Hurriyah police station. The complete absentness of anything bothered him terribly.

Something caught his eye. A glimmer. A shadow in the dark yellow fog.

The fuck
? He reached for his binos in the turret. Across the street, Johnathan spied through the dust scratched lens vendors hastily tucking and clutching whatever goods they could get their hands on. Only the most meager of items remained on the street. Even the sound of the Humvees seemed to fade, as if the entire world was holding its breath.

What’s going on?
Johnathan shook, his nerves pricked. Hairs stood on-end. His knees locked. He watched, hands resting on the M2 .50-cal. He searched for someone, anyone to put the tightening in his stomach at ease.
Where are they going?
Shadows snaked in between the empty spaces and seemed to grow larger. The yellow dust whipped the air. Al-Hurriyah was being consumed by it.

Johnathan could feel the lump in his heart become heavy. He pulled his scarf off. He choked on the dust, tasting all the nastiness of the Baghdad ghetto, but paid little heed. The soldier scanned his field of fire. Anticipation boiled in his veins. Then the yellow sand darkened again.

The glimmer returned, taking shape, forming in the dust. His mouth fell agape. “
What the fuck is that?”
He screamed inside, his mind rattled and confused and terrified.

From the alley across the road the shadows dissolved, giving form to some massive
Thing
with skin covered in bristle-like hair as black as tar. The bulking torso hissed, and swelled, hissed and swelled. Its thin, but otherwise muscular, fragile-looking legs twitched in the sand, protruding and stretching out, pulling down the tarps of the vender huts near it.

How many legs does this thing have? What is this? I’m dreaming, have to be. This can’t be…

In the dust-whipped wind what looked to be mandibles where its mouth should have been opened and then snapped shut. It was hissing, but the hissing sounded like clicking, the rattle of teeth in a glass jar or a snake poised to strike. On its head was an unmistakable shape, as frightening as it was. Bulging from its head, two swollen red eyes taking up nearly all of the creature’s face glared in the dust, compound, like the eye of a fly, gazing directly at him.

Its antenna drooped low, and then it began talking to him with a wild rush of clicks in its throat. The sound was terrible, reminding him of spring months back home, the swarms of cicadas that blanketed the canopy in his parents’ backyard every few years or so and the eerie sound they made, the clicking, horrible hissing, just like in that one movie Ricky loved to watch when they were kids around the same part of the year, the 1950s atomic-age science fiction flick, the one with the giant ants.

Partially hidden in the dust, the height of the hideous
Thing
was hard to guess, but whatever is was, it wasn’t possible. None of this was possible. It couldn’t be real, yet there it was all the same, hulking out from across the street, large and hungry looking.

“Are you seeing this?” Johnathan croaked, his voice pained with fear and doubt.

“What?” asked Ricky. He turned in his seat, looking out the driver’s side window. Searching. “I don’t see anything.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!” Johnathan yelled, panic stained in his voice. He kicked the driver’s seat.

“Dude, we’re about to dibby out. Stop being so jumpy,” Ricky scolded. “I don’t see anything, man.”

“Look, you asshole!” Johnathan kicked the driver’s seat again with his boot.

“Dude!” Smith turned fully around and peered in the direction Steele was gesturing. He fell silent for only a moment and then he yelled,
“Get down!”

“We need to do more than—” Johnathan had started to say, but was cut short. He looked back to the alley where the
Thing
had been, but the monster was gone, replaced by a man with a shaved head shouting something terribly familiar and propping an equally terrifying object across his shoulder.

Is that?

“RPG!”
Ricky screamed on the radio.

The air sucked back. Johnathan thought he was going to puke as he watched a plume of white smoke rocket toward him. The world was motionless for a second, perhaps less. In that moment he thought of Karen and Tabitha, he thought of his childhood and his friends that filled it. Then the explosion hit, lifting his Humvee upward into the air.

The large metal behemoth came crashing back to earth with a thunderous moan. He fell inside. His head smashed against the gunner’s platform below. He saw nothing, only white, burning light. Outside, he could hear the crackle of gunfire faintly against the ringing in his ears, like fireworks in a neighborhood a block away.

People were shouting. His squad mates, maybe. Language seemed beyond him at the moment. He could smell sulfur and the awful hint of something else…
like overcooked meat on the grill
, he imagined, dazed and numb. Through the broken window he watched the battle of Al-Hurriyah with disbelieving eyes.

Another explosion struck somewhere nearby. Pebbles or chunks of the police station perhaps rained down on his truck. The radio was abuzz with noise, fire direction, casualties. Someone yelled through the mike, “Death Blossom.”
Death Blossom…? Are we under attack…? Yes…Ricky called it out, didn’t he?
His head rung with the battle cry.

Johnathan shifted his weight. One of his legs fell from the strap he used as a seat, the other felt strangely dead. He looked. Among the yellow dust and stars that filled his eyes, he could see, though blurred, the gnarled remains of what was once his right leg.

“Shit!” he screamed, clinching at his thigh.
I can’t look. I can’t look. Ricky. Ricky?
“Smith? Ricky? Are you okay, man?” he winced, straining to get a look at his friend.

No answer.

More rattling pinged off his truck. Someone nearby yelled,
“Got you, you fucking bastard!”
Another voice screamed in language not entirely unfamiliar.

Must be some of the Iraqi police, he thought vaguely caring.
Death Blossom…those assholes are going to ping someone in the back…

Something was pinching his neck. He reached and felt warmth and something hard. He dug whatever it was out and pulled his hand to see. He glared dumbfounded at what looked like a tooth.

Not mine
, he thought, testing his teeth with his tongue. He looked at Ricky, but his form was covered in haze.

Gunfire continued to crackle outside, but in the broken and torn Humvee, the world felt like a tomb.

He could see Ricky now, lying awkwardly in his seat, one hand still clutching the radio receiver. Smoke wafted from his body. He didn’t move. And the smell…the smell was terrible.

Johnathan blinked.
Not real. Not real
. “Ricky, you son of a bitch, answer me! Are you okay?” he yelled. Hot adrenaline coursed through him like a drug, pooling in a venomous sundry of dreadful sorrow and hate, lumping together in his heart, stealing his breath. Maggie’s face flashed in front of him and then Karen’s, but he pushed them away.

Please, God. No.

“Ricky!”

Still no answer.

Loud pings ricocheted off the Humvee. Johnathan angled to get a better look at his friend. Outside, he could vaguely see the remnants of Renegades pressing the attack, a few trucks pulled in front of his, protecting him. Finally, his other leg fell from the strap, or what remained of the mangled meat. The malformed limb came down hard against the gunner’s platform in a wet and grotesque thud.

“Shit!”

He clutched his thigh. Eyes clamped shut. Stars filled his vision again. Biting his lip. Blood tasted like iron. The agony burned, shooting up his body like a lightning bolt. His head fell back.

Lightheaded and heavy, darkness began to cover his vision.
No!
He fought to stay awake.
Ricky!
He fought against the clammy coldness prickling his skin. He fought against the gaseous feeling in his gut. He fought against the terrible pain, and horrifying thoughts of his friend.

Is he…?
No!
He’s not. Can’t be. Not him. He’s married. Maggie is waiting. Maggie and Moxie. Bobby and Jake. We’ll get together, grill some burgers. Nope. This isn’t real. Ricky’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. Right? This can’t happen to me, to us. Not us.

“Smith? Steele?” yelled someone from outside. The gunfire had faded away. Smoke clung to the ground like a vapor of death.

Johnathan was fading, but he could hear voices. They were distant, as if miles away, calling his name, calling for him and for Ricky.

“
Shit
, Steele…hold on.”

Johnathan recognized Sergeant Cobbett as he peered into the ruined Humvee. “High there,
serge
,” he said dizzily.

The tubby father of five yanked open the back passenger door. He heaved himself toward the gunner’s platform. Carefully avoiding the fleshy mess of what remained of Johnathan’s leg, his boots rested underneath him as he surveyed the damage done to his gunner.

“Everything is going to be okay. Hang in there,” croaked Cobbett. His freighted eyes said everything his words would not. His lips looked parched, his tongue lashing out in nervous licks.

“I’m fine,
serge
. Check on Smith. He isn’t answering me,” Johnathan pleaded, grimacing against another surge of molten pain. He watched Cobbett’s eyes. The robust team leader glanced toward Smith, lingering for only a moment, and then fell back to Steele, apologetically, sad, telling the gunner the tragic truth of his friend.

“What the fuck happened? What’s wrong with Smith? Ricky?
Ricky!
Can you hear me? Answer me,
damnit!
God, answer me…please…
please
…” Johnathan cried out.

“The medic is coming. Hang on.” Cobbett did his best to sound reassuring. Holding Steele down, he took out his first-aid kit and began to put pressure on the gunner’s mangled leg.

Johnathan screamed out in pain and then started to sob, touching his face to hide the tears. Pulling back he saw red. Dark, dripping crimson covered his glove.
What the hell?
He looked down. For the first time, he realized the extent of the damage. His right boot lay somewhere unseen in a nightmarish scene of flesh and bone and pulsing sinew. Chunks lay exposed. His uniform torn and drenched in gore.