sheet.
The body was burnt beyond all recognition. Ashen white patches of skull, surrounded by blackened and twisted flesh, glared in the overhead lights. The circular object was a car steering wheel, clutched by skeletal hands. There was no way for Ritter to ID the body, as most of its face was missing; only a dark mass of nightmare fuel remained.
Ritter dry heaved and covered his mouth.
“Keep it together,” Carlos said as he snatched a clipboard from the slab and read over the attached forms.
Ritter heaved again, and slapped at his collar bone. “What? Oh, his surgical plate.” Carlos said as he peered over the body. “Nope, that’s gone too.” Carlos shrugged and turned to Shannon.
“Get a DNA sample. We’ll find something to match it against,” she said to Mike. Mike produced a pair of pruning shears from under his coat and reached for the body’s hand. Ritter turned away as he heard the snap of bone cracking.
Ritter took a slow, deep breath. This was almost over.
Carlos cleared his throat. “According to this, the other bodies from inside the car are here, too.”
Ritter spun around. Carlos pointed at a wrapped body two slabs away.
“Other bodies? He was alone. I swear!” Ritter replayed the moment Haider got in the car again and again, there was no way anyone else was in the car.
“You mean they were killed in the blast,” Shannon said.
Carlos shook his head. “Says here they pulled a woman and an…infant girl… from the backseat. No identification recovered.”
Ritter’s heart skipped a beat. “No…” he whispered.
Shannon tugged the sheet from beneath the body’s head and peeked underneath. She looked up at Ritter. “Is this Baida?”
She flipped over the sheet, uncovering a smashed and bloated face. Ritter nodded as he looked at the long curly hair which lay in bloody strands across the lips that she never let him kiss.
Ritter backed away from her body. He bumped into an empty slab and sank to the ground. She's gone, he thought. The same thought rattled through his mind over and over again as he fought to keep tears at bay.
Shannon covered Baida up with a slight degree of reverence. “We lost track of his vehicle for a few minutes when he pulled into the garage. He must have grabbed Baida and their baby at that location.”
“He was bolting?” Carlos asked.
“Reasonable. When he saw Ritter he knew we were on to him.” Shannon turned and looked at the small bundle on the next slab.
“We’ll catch hell for the collateral damage.” Carlos wiped the edges of the clipboard with the edge of his shirt and placed it back on the slab.
“We didn’t know anyone else was in the vehicle. As for the rest, the Pakis think that the explosion was a car bomb.” Shannon shrugged as she reached her hand towards the small bundle, but hesitated before she could touch it. She clenched her fist and pulled her hand back.
Mike raised the shears. Clack. Clack.
“No need. We have what we came for.” Shannon pulled the abaya hood over her face. “Let’s go.”
His room was quiet. He sat on one of the two cots, staring blankly at the overturned cardboard box that was being used as a table. Ritter wasn’t sure how long he had to wait, or what he was waiting for. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what day it was. Nothing made sense anymore.
Haider. Baida. Their little girl. Part of him thought they would demand more of his racing mind. He helped extinguish that family, but their deaths meant less and less the more he reflected on his long day. Ritter’s mind replayed the moment he pulled the trigger and shot the bearded man. He felt the pistol jerk in his hand over and over, saw the Rorschach smear against the car.
Someone knocked on the door. Ritter pulled his head out of his hands and sat up.
“Yeah?” he said.
Carlos opened the door, Mike stood behind him. Carlos held several plastic cups in one hand, and a flask in the other. “Mind if we join you?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a response as he and Mike entered and sat on the cot across from Ritter.
Carlos placed four plastic cups on the overturned box. “We’ve got to hand it to you, kid. You kept it together pretty well today.” He unscrewed the flask and poured three shots.
A strong smell of whiskey tickled Ritter’s nostrils.
Ritter looked up at Carlos, “Then why do I feel like hammered shit?”
Carlos smiled and passed a cup to Mike, then raised a toast. “To your first!”
Ritter shrugged and grabbed a cup. They threw back the shot and Ritter hacked and coughed as the alcohol burned his throat. “Christ, what is that?” he gagged.
Carlos poured more shots, but left the cups on the table. “We only bust out the good stuff in honor of a first kill.”
Ritter felt the booze burn in his stomach and leaned back against the wall.
“Not everyone can pull the trigger like you did, or think on their feet as they run from Paki cops. Most Farm types would’ve been pinched in a heartbeat, but you got it done and we got our man.” Carlos nodded.
Ritter’s eyes clenched as he thought of the morgue. “That’s not all we got.”
Carlos pressed a cup back into Ritter’s hand. “It gets easier.”
Ritter looked into his drink. “It gets easier to do, or to deal with?”
Carlos kicked back his shot and said, “Yes.”
Mike cleared his throat and pulled a sheathed knife from his cargo pocket and handed it to Carlos. Carlos held the knife up next to his face.
“In our last unit, a Soldier earns his knife with his first kill. Things aren’t exactly ideal out here for a proper ceremony. But you earned this. You helped nail the bastard that killed Jeremy.” Carlos and Mike placed their hands over their knife hilts and Carlos held out the hilt to Ritter. “For blood.”
Ritter reached out and grabbed the hilt, Carlos held the sheath in an iron grip. “Say it,” Carlos intoned.
“For blood,” Ritter said. Carlos let go of the sheath.
The hilt was identical to the knives he’d seen Mike and Carlos carrying. Ritter slid the knife from the sheath; it was double bladed and bore an inscription CRY HAVOC. Ritter found the balance point at the hilt and practiced reversing the grip.
Mike nodded slightly and nudged Carlos.
“Ha! If things work out maybe we’ll teach you how to use that.” Carlos said.
“Work out?”
“Shannon’s speaking with, uh, them, about you.” Carlos seemed reticent in his use of pronouns.
“’Them’ who?”
“The program directors,” Carlos’s voice lowered “and that had better be the last time we ever speak of it. Not every secret will make you happy."
Several gentle knocks rapped on the door. Mike stood and opened the door, Shannon was there, back in a more form fitting dress.
“You bastards started without me?” she glared at Carlos and sat next to Mike on his cot.
Carlos poured her a shot, which she drank without hesitation or a moment’s discomfort.
Shannon looked at Ritter and smiled, “You have a decision to make. If you want, we’ll put you on the next flight back to Arizona, and that will end our relationship with you.” She paused, watching Ritter for a reaction. “Or you can stay with us. Stay as part of the team and fight here in Pakistan, or where ever we’re needed.”
Ritter felt his bruised face and traced the cut on his forehead. “Is every day like this?”
“We won’t throw you in to the deep end again, not until you’re ready.” Shannon pulled out the non-disclosure agreement and clicked open a pen. “So, will you stay or will you go?”
Ritter looked at the piece of paper and the pen. “I can’t ever go back, can I? Not to the way things used to be.”
Shannon shook her head and rasped, “No.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
Shannon tore the paper in half, and in half again and again. “Excellent.” She stood up to leave. <
br />
“Wait, what does CLB mean?” Ritter asked.
Shannon leaned in, as if to kiss Ritter and placed a hand behind his neck. She whispered into his ear “I will teach you a word, but you must never repeat it. Understand?” Ritter nodded. “Caliban.”
THE END
Ritter's journey continues in the full-length novel INTO DARKNESS, available from Amazon.com on January 21st.