No loud bang, no force into my shoulder as the round exploded out, and definitely no enemy falling as it caught my high-speed offering. What I figured was a jam was merely the fact that I had never pulled back the charging handle on my rifle, thus putting a round in the chamber. The funny part about it (okay, not truly funny, I guess just a bad expression) but the funny part about it was that not a one of them realized I was there or that I had attempted to fire on their position. Two of the men were looking back towards where they had just come and the third was now coming up to my corner. I had ducked back down and was about to do emergency procedures on my rifle to get it firing, I did not have the time, and they would certainly hear the noise.
And then I got pissed, I’d be fucking God-damned if I was going to die with a useless rifle in my hands. I stood, flipped the clip on my knife, and quietly slid it free from its sheath. The brown of a Chinese boot just became visible as I brought my right fist up to right under my chin, the blade pointing outwards – otherwise that night would have really sucked for me. I flexed my elbow out as hard and as fast as I could. The Chinese soldier’s eyes got huge as he watched my black metal blade swing towards him. He was ducking down to his left and simultaneously bringing his rifle up. My blade clipped off the top of his front sight post slowing me down marginally…and that was it, the tip of my blade pierced his forehead.
My arm shivered from the force of the strike. His eyes crossed for the briefest of seconds to try and focus on the steel that was even now scrambling his thoughts. The weight as he fell pulled my arm down, almost making me lose my weapon. I yanked it free, somewhat stunned at how little blood there actloo now ually was. I had been kind of expecting it to spurt out like a geyser. Quentin and another Marine had come up behind me and quickly dispatched the two remaining enemy soldiers.
“Hard core, man,” Quentin said to me after he checked the soldiers to make sure they were dead. I had pulled my knife free, wiping it on Bobbie-fucking-Chen’s uniform. “Right in the forehead, fuck that must have hurt. You alright, Talbot?” he asked.
Right there and then the world took a hard left turn, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be right again. But I nodded to him, seemed the right thing to do. I’d kill more men before the night was through and many more before the veil of death will enshroud me; but like any first, he would linger in my thoughts. I searched his body quickly, grabbing what I had originally thought was Intel and shoved it into my pocket. I would forward it to someone with shiny shit on their collars as soon as I found any of them. Probably riding the whole thing out at the Officer’s Club.
The element of surprise was long past, but the forces attacking us were winning by sheer numbers. If not for our battleships parked on the peninsula’s doorstep, we would have been screwed and overrun. Rounds whistled overhead, the ground shook with each impact. The North side of the line was getting hammered into the Stone Age. I waited for their response, figuring missile strikes would be incoming at any moment. They never did; all I can figure is that they didn’t want to escalate to the next level. They had given it a shot, and when it fell short, they decided to cut and run. I don’t know, it made no sense to me then, and still doesn’t. They were winning.
The sun was coming up by the time we drove the yellow devils back underground or for the truly unlucky ones into the ground. Not that I cared at the time – or could even tell – but most of the paratroopers were North Korean and the men coming up through the sewers were Chinese. Media on all sides had completely quashed the notion that anything extraordinary had happened that night. The thirty-two Marines and eighty-six South Koreans that had died were apparently due to a training accident. A troop transport Marine helicopter had collided with a Galaxy transport plane that had been taking the South Koreans on a training exercise in Japan – that was the official report.
The two hundred and seventy-four North Koreans and Chinese that died that night were never reported, at least not in papers I had read. It was like they had fallen into a black hole never to be heard from again. What did those regimes tell the grieving families? Anything? Probably nothing. Probably told them they never had a son, and if they wanted to live out the rest of their natural lives they’d never talk about the mythical boy again.
We were on high alert that entire next day and night. I was straddling the line of wanting to fall asleep and thinking I would never be able to do so again. The army finally came in and relieved us, five divisions. Never seen so many men holding a rifle in my life. I think I slept a full twenty-four hours straight. Time had been severely skewed for me during this time frame; surreal, I guess, would be the appropriate descriptor. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt. As humans, I’m fairly convinced that we are hardwired with the ability and want to kill other men. Only as a means of self-defense, I’m not saying all Hannibal Lecter-style. But morality, religion, common decency, civilization, they all scream with Thou Shalt Not Kill. I got some commendation for killing Bobbie-fucking-Chen, cuckr-stylouldn’t even begin to tell you where it ended up. Never seemed right that his life boiled down to a combat ribbon. I could bet he felt the same.
Sorry…digression. So there I am sleeping off the effects of a major adrenaline rush, and I start coming up from the depths of my tiny death with this thing poking me in the side, couldn’t get comfortable to save my life. I finally moved enough to where I could reach my hand into my pocket. I pulled out this notebook that was about six-by-nine. What I had thought was Intel was actually Bobbie-fucking-Chen’s journal. No biggie, who among us can read Chinese? Only it’s not in Chinese, it’s English and the handwriting is meticulous. Seems my first kill went to school in Chicago. He was going for his doctorate in Engineering when his government had called him back to die uselessly at the hands of a troubled teen.
He was twenty-six and actually had a fiancée back in Chicago, not sure what his parents were going to think of Lillian Fraser…didn’t sound Chinese to me. I read that entire journal. Probably simultaneously the smartest and most stupid thing I had ever done in my life. I got to know Bobbie, his dreams, his hopes, his love. But on the flip side, it gave dimension to a nameless, faceless enemy. I think I could have more easily forgotten about that night if not for the journal; but then, should I really have been let off the hook that easily? It’s important to know that the person you are killing is indeed human. Bobbie-fucking-Chen was the reason I started writing journals, I figured if someone were to kill me I would want them to know who I was. Kind of a guilt hand-off if you will.
I went to see Lillian on my next leave, almost eighteen months later when I got rotated back to the mainland US. She lived in a brownstone apartment in downtown Chicago. I thought long and hard about what I was going to say if she would even talk to me. I figured it would be a slap followed by a litany of accusations, curses, and tears. It was a cold Wednesday when the cab dropped me off by her apartment – forgot the rest of the world was on a different schedule. I loitered around the front of her building for a good five hours before I finally saw her walking down the sidewalk. Bobbie-fucking-Chen’s drawings did her no justice. She had long, blond hair, looked like worked gold with the sun setting behind her. From this distance I could see a sadness in her features even when she smiled and talked with some of her neighbors as she approached.
I had thought out an entire speech. I said not one word of it as she came within three feet of my location. She said nothing to me, my dress greens probably not stirring any kind of patriotic musings in her. She went past and I let her. She had gone up most of the five stairs leading into her building. I had turned and was berating myself for being such a coward.
“You knew him didn’t you?” she asked.
I spun, thinking she couldn’t possibly be talking to me. How could she know?
“Not really,” I said. “Not at first anyway.”
“You were there the night he died, the night the government denied anything happened?”
“I was,” I told her.
I couldn’t tell her
much more than that without potentially putting myself in judicial harm. If I so much as breathed a word of what happened, I’d find myself in Leavenworth and I had no desire to make small rocks out of big ones for the rest of my life. I dipped my hea di as brd, I wanted to confess, I wanted her to absolve me of his death. I approached her; my hands were trembling. She looked like she wanted to dash into her building and I couldn’t blame her. I handed her his journal. She took it, her eyes never leaving my own.
“He loved you, and I’m sorry,” I told her.
She took the notebook from me, her hands beginning to tremble as if the book was the source of the shaking. I turned and left. She didn’t say anything else. I could only hope the words he wrote would give her some measure of solace and perhaps closure, although, the only thing that would ever make it right was if she could hold her love again. I found a bar close by. Didn’t even have to show my fake ID. I let a bunch of the patrons buy me free drinks; enough so that I could attempt to wipe the stain of events clean from my mind. Alas, I never did find an elixir potent enough to do it. I tried…I tried really hard. Bobbie-fucking-Chen would haunt me all of my days.
Talbot-sode #2
Figured I’d expand on Mike’s couch fiasco at the age of 16.
I grabbed up my stuff and jammed myself between the couch and the wall. Heather had stuffed her things under the couch and pulled the throw blanket over herself.
“Hey, honey, what are you doing all bundled up?” her father asked. He was a cop and I’d had more than one run in with him. He’d forbidden his daughter from dating me; I should have silently thanked him, that just made me all the more desirable to her.
“Don’t feel too good,” she told him.
“You do look a little flushed,” he’d replied, coming over I think to feel her forehead. “That’s why I came home early, don’t feel too well myself. I think something’s going around.”
“You should go lie down,” Heather said. I could hear the desperation in her voice, I hoped he couldn’t.
“Nonsense, misery loves company. I’ll go brew us some tea,” he said.
Some might think this would be a perfect opportunity for escape. No such luck, the kitchen had a knee wall which gave a full view to the living room – fucking open floor plans. We were both stuck, Heather had more reason to be where she was, but she couldn’t get up naked, that would surely raise red flags with her father.
“Great,” Heather said, trying to add some cheer.
“Let me turn the heat up, it’s a little chilly in here,” he told her.
It was then I realized my entire backside was pressed up against the radiator. I could hear the pops of expanding pipes as hot water began to find its way to the register.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I lamented.
“You say something?” her dad asked.
“Just clearing my throat,” she told him.
Dad Killington put on the television, and for two hours I got to listen to how lions were the kings of the savannah. At one point, her Dad asked Heather if she smelled chicken, pretty sure that was my ass frying. Then the party really began to swell as Mom Killington ca>">ngs of me home and started dinner.
“I have to pee so bad,” Heather muttered, when her dad went into the kitchen with her mother.
“Yeah, well I need about a gallon of aloe for my third degree burns. Not going to be able to sit for a friggin’ week.”
She laughed and quickly turned it into a cough for effect.
“Are you sure you’re alright to go get this stuff?” Heather’s mom asked her husband.
“For my women…anything.” A few moments later I heard his car start and he pulled away.
“You’ve got about fifteen minutes, Heather. I suggest you get dressed and get Mike the hell out of my house.”
I felt the blood drain from my soul. “Oh, shit,” I muttered.
“I’m going into my bathroom to freshen up and then I’m going to pour myself a huge glass of wine and pretend this never happened,” she said.
I needed all of a minute and a half to pull my clothes on, even over my singed ass. I was halfway home when Mr. Killington drove past. He glared at me as he went, probably would have arrested me for something if he hadn’t been coming back from an errand. I waved and smiled. “I’m doing your daughter,” I said as I kept smiling at him.
Mark Tufo, Lycan Fallout_Rise Of The Werewolf
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