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My finger hovered over the send button, but then I shook my head and punched the enter key to send it off. It had been a year of talking to him. A year of having a real friend I could pour myself out to.

I still couldn’t figure out how that friend turned out to be Murphy, but I wasn’t going to look the gift horse up the ass. No Trojans in sight there.

The problem plaguing me when I lay in my bunk at night was how he would feel if I came back. The last time we saw each other and sort of accidentally had sex, he made it clear he had no interest in a relationship. But what kind of guy with no thoughts of a future emails a girl in a foreign country for a year?

Which included 245 emails, some including explicit sexual instructions, and nude pictures. Both of which I expected a call about using my military issue email for. So far so good. Only a few weeks, and I’d be out of this hell-hole forever.

Seeing Murphy occupied my thoughts, the idea of talking to him without the threat of someone calling the police over our raised voices.

The time we spent together was good, really fucking good, and I wanted to do it again. I feared telling him that outright, though.

A knock on my hut door dragged me from thoughts of home, and I sat up. My platoon sergeant stuck his head in the door. “Williams, let’s go. We have a mission.”

Usually, on the more dangerous stuff, I stayed at the FOB, but lately, we’d been short on personnel, so, like now, I got pulled out to endure patrols while random men fired weapons at us from beyond the fence line.

Tonight, the silence felt oddly weighted. It seemed fitting as I strapped on my body armor and grabbed my M-4 rifle from the locked rack near my bed. The few people going in the Humvee stood around the tan camo box on wheels. It took ten minutes to get everyone loaded up and maneuvered under hundreds of pounds of Kevlar, but we all made it.

“Williams, your first night patrol? You ready?” Sergeant Brett shouted above the not-so-humming engine.

“Ready, Sergeant,” I yelled back with a smile, despite the four hours of sleep I’d miss tomorrow. Hopefully my last night patrol too. I preferred to see the bad guy as they shot at me.

We exited the FOB through a controlled gate and headed out into the night. These dark missions were uncommon, but I never asked questions. I went where instructed and said, “Yes, sir.” when someone asked me a question. It wasn’t like any of us saw real action from them, either. This far out in the desert, we had a few half-hearted rebels to deal with, but not much more. Some of the men didn’t even bother putting on their gear in camp anymore.

I adjusted the strap on my helmet, so I could push the top back and sit straight. The rim on the base pressed weird into the seat and slid the helmet forward every time I dipped my head down. Super annoying, but I couldn’t take it off either.

It was an uneventful twenty-minute ride until we reached the destination camp we needed to patrol. Another three hours of walking around a fence line on patrol duty, nodding at the other guards, and then back in the Humvee.

I still hadn’t figured out why they needed to nab people from the other FOB to guard this one, but I didn’t have enough rank to ask questions out loud.

We were on our way back when a kathunk under the jeep set everyone on alert. Even at four am, my fingers began to tingle with adrenaline as I adjusted my weapon to ready and flicked off the safety, just in case.

The rest of the crew did as well before we jerked to a stop. One by one, we filed out and lined up along the edge of the jeep. The other Humvee had stopped a few meters ahead the squad inside had climbed out and were standing for cover as well.

“Did anyone see anything?” Sergeant whispered.

It was strange to be so scared in a place like this. The desert stretched around them as far as they could see. The moon shone as brightly as the sun above, and the stars were brilliant against the soft dark of the morning.

And yet, my knees shook, and my hands began to sweat inside the gloves that barely fit my tiny hands.

I clutched my weapon and tried to make myself the smallest target possible against the vehicle.

The first bullet crack jolted my system like I went head-to-head with a six pack of Red Bull and made it out standing. Shouting came next, with officers and sergeants pointing and yelling and calling for backup.

I caught a glimpse of movement and watched a figure crawl over the adjacent sand dune, and I hesitated, maybe praying this wasn’t actually happening. He lifted a weapon. I couldn’t make out what kind, only the dark silhouette of it pressed to his shoulder. When he slid down the small hill and trained the gun at me, I fired.

Blood sprayed across the sand, and all I could think was how odd that it looked blue under moonlight.

One shot. One kill.

Then something hit my shoulder hard and knocked me back. Hard enough that my helmet bounced off the Humvee. I shook it off as more figures skittered through the sand, and I barely made it around to the other side of the vehicle before lead began pelting steel.

This side wasn’t any safer.

I fired my weapon at will, standing back to back with my sergeant. I couldn’t get the gun to sit right against the pocket of my shoulder though. Every time I levered it up, my strength failed after one shot. It didn’t matter. I had to get out of this, so I repeated the movement every time. Each motion sparked stars in front of my eyes and somehow set my fingers tingling, my whole arm tingling. Like the crack of an elbow on a hard surface.

I kept going until I wasn’t fast enough. Until something—a bullet—struck me again, this one knocking against my Kevlar, spinning me backward into the Humvee. The helmet fell forward, and I pushed it back again, too far back, in time to watch a man raise a weapon and aim it at my head. The slow purple of sunrise haloed the enemy combatant. A beautiful background to a game over.

As the world slowed, I thought about my mother. Our entire relationship passed through my mind in less than a second. I thought about how I killed her and maybe this was the ending I deserved.

The world was always dark. This time, I embraced it.