That day. The day I learned an answer to one of mankind’s big questions: what do you see when your body is at the point of death? Not your average day. An average day is going to work, coming home, parking your fat arse on the couch in front of the TV, a takeaway perched on your knee while you piss and moan to yourself about how skint you are, how the country is going to the dogs, how much you hate your job. That is an average day, one that blends into countless others through the years, till you wake up in your fifties, bored, bald and fat, wondering at what point the dreams of your younger self went down the toilet. That was never going to be me, and my choices in life led me to this day, what looked like my last day. Karma is a bitch, I hear you on that one.
An hour earlier, I was doing a routine sweep of the area with my unit. Of my thirty-one years on the earth, I had spent fifteen of them in the army. We were out in Iraq, pushing back the terrorists that threatened the small villages we were camped near to. Many of the villagers wanted us here, and the tensions were rising.
It’s not like on the news. You think it all looks the same. Desert, broken buildings, busted vehicles, shattered people. There is no beauty on the news, but it exists here. We fear what we don’t know, what we can’t control, but here people live the same as us in many ways. I have seen photos on walls, gardens lovingly tended, children loved and cared for. The actions of few cause the outcome for many, and I saw it every day. I joined to serve, to have a purpose, but I also enlisted to find the family I never had. So now I fought for them too, with them by my side.
There had been a lot of unease the last few weeks, and you could feel the stress, the taut emotions of the people and the enemy, even through the hot, dry air. I had had a bad feeling in the pit of my gut for days, and when the shots had started firing, I knew why. They had been gearing up to take us down, and as prepared as we thought we were, we were still caught with our pants down that day.
‘Pull back!’ I boomed gruffly to my charges. ‘Come on, go, go, go!’ I started to run for the nearest building, the one we had just finished sweeping. It was abandoned, full of empty homes, food still rotting on tables that would never host a family meal again. I kept looking over my shoulder, watching my guys take shelter one by one. A hail of shots whizzed past my ear, and I threw myself against the side of the nearest car. Hunching down, I looked to where the shots were coming from. Two of my guys were still on the way to the shelter – one hunched over, not moving. The other, Travis, was dragging him to safety. Blood followed them like a trail of gunpowder as they desperately tried to escape. Another barrage of shots rang out, and Travis jerked. He had been hit, but he kept going, pulling Smithy along with him, hung over his shoulder. They weren’t going to make it. I jumped up, firing a volley off at the top of the building, the source of the shots but they fired back. Hunching down again, I shouted at Travis to get a move on, grabbing my radio and running towards them.
‘Hightower, can you see him?’ I screamed into the radio. My sniper on the roof, Bradley, was my ace in the hole.
‘Nearly, the slippery bastard is hidden well. He has a child up there with him, using him as a human shield.’
I cursed under my breath. I reached Travis and grabbed Smithy from him. Travis was bleeding badly, but it looked like a shoulder wound.
We ran hell for leather towards the shelter, Hightower screaming into the radio.
‘He’s reloading Coop, get a move on!’
I was almost at the shelter, Travis was just ahead, racing to get ready to help Smithy, who was still out cold. My muscles burned from the effort of dragging him along with me, but I ignored the pain, pushing on.
‘Almost there,’ I shouted back into the receiver. ‘Find a shot, and take him down!’
Hightower acknowledged and just as we reached the lip of the shelter, shots rang out again, this time with the ‘phut phut’ of the sniper rifle as Hightower followed orders. I was just wondering whether the poor child on the roof was okay, when a huge force pushed me straight off my feet, into the air. I reached out to tighten my grip on Smithy, but felt nothing but space. Hitting the ground, I struggled for breath, dust and debris raining down around me. Hightower was screaming down the air waves, mobilising the others.
I struggled to breathe, and my mouth was coated with a new layer of dust every time I managed to pull in a ragged breath. I could hear commotion around me, and moved my head to the side to look for Smithy. I could see him a few feet away, and I knew without a doubt he was dead. I turned away, already wanting to erase the memory of his crumpled form from my memory. I coughed, and felt a warm trickle run down my cheek. Not good¸ I thought to myself. I could hear my friends, my comrades in arms, running towards me, firing shots off, barking orders at each other. There was no white light, no images of me running around in short trousers, nothing. I could see nothing but dust, flashes of weaponry, and the smell of panic and desperation in the air. I felt bone tired, and a little voice inside of me told me to sleep. I tried to shake my head, keep myself awake, but the warm feeling spread through me. My body wasn’t responding. It was like slipping into a hot bath after a long, cold day. I could feel my muscles began to relax, and my throat filling up with liquid. I tried to spit, to turn my head, but my eyelids were already fluttering. I thought of the boy, no doubt dead now on the rooftop. I wondered if he had parents around to grieve for him, people who would mourn his death. And that’s the last thing I remember.