VIII. Icy Memories


The leaves crunched under Carrie’s feet and a bright sun filtered through a thick canopy of leaves. An adolescent puppy tumbled along at her heels as she walked a well beaten trail. She stopped at a large oak tree and wrapped her arms as far around the huge trunk as she could. She sighed happily and the puppy jumped up and put his paws on her legs and whimpered for attention.

Carrie unslung the heavy rifle on her back and set it down next to the large tree, then sat down, leaning against the rough bark. The gangly brown and grey dog just eyed her expectantly. She listened to the peaceful sounds of the forest, then gradually they were replaced by the whine of motorcycle engines.

She cocked an ear and slowly rose and walked to the top of the hill and looked into the valley. Spread out before her was the motocross rally that many years before had brought her family to California from Tennessee.

As she scanned the campground with a practiced soldier’s eye she found the battered camper. Her breath caught in her throat and her pulse quickened. She watched as her mother walked to the truck and kissed her father through the window and then he drove away. Five year old Molly jumped up and down in a fit because she wasn’t able to go to the city with her brother Chris, and a younger version of herself just sat sulking at the picnic table.

The puppy at Carrie’s feet began to whine and then the air filled with the din of many dogs barking. Carrie spun and retrieved her rifle, and then ran and slid down the hill. In the distance the cotton cloud-dotted blue sky lit up with a flash, then blossomed with a mushroom cloud. As she sprinted pell-mell towards the campground, the buzz of motocross engines became the shriek of HK turbines.

The dogs howled.
Carrie’s eyes flew open and something close to a sob escaped from her throat. She turned onto her back, grimaced and pressed her palms to her eyes. It wasn’t the worst dream she’d ever had, bad dreams came with the territory, but she hated dreaming about her family. She looked at her watch in the dim light and saw that it was still early in the day, so she would need to try to get back to sleep.

She looked around and saw that she wasn’t the only one having a hard day’s sleep. Aral was shaking his head and growling, and Devin’s forehead was sweaty. However, Symms and Crow seemed to be sleeping like rocks. When she turned to Collin, though, his eyes were open- the Sergeant always taking care of his troops.

She sat up and grabbed her canteen, “Keeping watch?”

“It’s been restless for everyone,” Collin replied, rolling to a sitting position.

“Crow and Symms seem to be sleeping peacefully,” she commented dryly.

“That’s because they got a good bit of liquor into themselves before they hit their pads, and I got them there before they could hit anything else.” Collin commented, then realized what he said.

Carrie rubbed her forehead with both hands and winced at his choice of words, glancing down at her bruised knuckles. She began to wonder if this was how you started to lose it. She sat there silently for a couple of minutes thinking of the ways she’d seen soldiers finally just go crazy and give up. They’d go berserk and run recklessly into plasma fire or into the tracks of an HK. Sometimes they’d just sit silently in the junkyard until someone, if they were lucky a comrade, came and dragged them away. She thought she was tougher than that; she hoped she was.
Collin had slept lightly all night, listening to the sounds of his squad stirring in their sleep. Often he wondered what they dreamed, but he knew better than to ask about them. His dreams involved too many flashes of light and loud sounds, and he was happy to be quit of them when the other’s dreams had made them cry out and wake him.

He woke again as Carrie jerked from whatever phantoms had been haunting her and sat up. He knew better than to try to comfort her; he wouldn’t have tried that with any of the others in the squad, and wondered why he considered it now. He just tried conversation, but took the wrong path and kicked himself mentally. He watched the gears turn in her head, over what, he wasn’t sure. She wordlessly sipped from her canteen for a while and lay back down, and eventually he did the same.
“Orders are we scout the remaining areas of interest,” Collin reported as he joined the squad in rec. He lowered himself between Crow and Aral and started in on the rice and something brown they’d been given for breakfast.

Symms grumbled quietly, “So do you know if anything’s going to be done about that factory?”

“No, and he wouldn’t talk about it, so we won’t either,” Collin ordered, pointedly looking at everyone, especially at Crow and Symms. “You guys go start squaring away your gear, we leave tomorrow night.”

Carrie watched them leave, picked a piece of something inedible out of her food, and finishing up her plate. When they were out of ear shot she remarked lazily, “I don’t think Aral and Devin would do much talking about anything anyway.”

“Yeah, kids these days don’t do much talking, and what they do is so low you barely hear them. Years of hushing to keep their tone down so that they aren’t overheard, it’s almost eerie watching kids play in the tunnels.” He frowned to himself, washing down some of the grainy food with some tinny water from his canteen.

“Makes them quiet soldiers,” she offered grimly, and Collin grunted in agreement. She
turned to face him, “So, what’s the plan?”

“I told you the plan. Same as before, scout the areas we missed, report.” He replied evenly, meeting her eyes.

“Sure, that’s what the captain said.” Carrie watched him carefully, leaving that thought unfinished. He blinked and she knew he wasn’t telling her everything. She picked up her plate and stood. “So, if that’s the plan, are there any special supplies I need to lay in before we go?”

He looked away, “No, I’ll pick up anything extra we might need.”

“Right,” she reluctantly accepted his words, “Ok, then. I’ll go start squaring away my gear as well.” She didn’t wait for a reply and headed for the back stairs, stopping only to rinse off her plate. She glanced back to Wall with another puzzled look. He sat as if in deep thought, with a frown creasing his face.
Corporal Reynolds handed over to her a battered M16 and started to explain the fundamentals of weaponry. However, he looked at her curiously as she removed the magazine and checked the chamber. “You seem to know a little about this.”

Her fifteen year old hands were smaller and not as calloused as they took apart the weapon. She answered, “My father had an AR-15. He told me I couldn’t fire it until I could take it apart and put it back together. I learned how at eleven.”

Reynolds grunted his approval, “So I imagine you know how to shoot it, then?”

Carrie just laughed and nodded.

The corporal cautioned, “Don’t get cocky. You may know how to shoot it, but when something’s shooting back at you it’s not like at the range.”

Carrie turned the corner to enter their section of the sleeping quarters and stopped abruptly- sitting on her pad was an XM500 .50 caliber rifle. She looked to Crow who was now checking out a large plasma rifle.

She forced a smile and tried to cover the concern she felt, “Has Santa been here?” She began to realize what Wall was up to, but she wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. She didn’t like the questions that were popping into her head being unanswered and never liked questions going into a mission.

Crow grunted a smile, “I’d have preferred chocolate.”

Carrie did chuckle at that and strode to her pad. She squatted down next to it and examined her new weapon. It had obviously seen better days, as had all the weapons in every armory, but looked to be in good shape. She did stop herself from starting to take it apart and check it. Instead, she turned to see how the others were doing with their gear.

She sat on her heels between the trainee’s pallets, and examined what they had laid out on their pads. She took a few unnecessary items out of Aral’s piles, and then did the same for Devin’s. She thought they might need some room for them to carry some extra items for the squad if what she was thinking Collin was preparing for was right. She was also going to have to have more room for the large rounds for her rifle.

“OK, pack it up,” she ordered them and then watched them pack it properly. She only had to correct Devin once, and then it was done. The puppies were training up pretty well.

Carrie returned to rifle, hefted it off her pad and settled herself on the foam next to it. She turned to Aral, “Come over here with me, and I’ll show you about this rifle.”

She took the rifle apart and examined the parts for wear, lecturing Aral on the importance of checking a weapon. She was showing him how to reassemble the weapon and attaching the upper receiver to the lower when Collin returned.

Collin took his pack and placed several detonators and C4 into it. Carrie caught his eye and gave him a questioning look. He just shook his head and turned and walked out. She jumped up and followed him around the corner.

“Wall, wait!” She caught up to him in front of the stairs and he turned to her, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

He crossed his arms and responded, “I’ve already told you.”

She frowned at him, wondering why he was being so cagey, and stepped in close to add in a low tone. “It’s seems to me that I’m not being told everything. I’m not comfortable going into a mission without clear objectives.”

Collin leaned in, placed his hand on her shoulder and said quietly and closely in her ear, “Trust me. I promise I’ll tell you what you need to know when you need to know.”

She pulled back and looked at him nonplussed, her only reply a quick nod. His hand on her shoulder and his cheek up against hers had made her heart race, and she was almost positive she’d felt his thumb caress her neck when he let her go.

He then took her hand and pressed something into it. “I turned in your M16.” She uncoiled her fingers and found Molly’s key chain. He turned and entered the stairwell, taking two steps at a time up the stairs. She watched after him, rubbing her forehead.

She ran, stumbling on the concrete rubble, trying to drag five year old Molly behind her. Carrie could barely see the tattered brown sweater as her mother tried to lead them to a safe place. Carrie fell to her knees and stifled a cry. She looked down at the knobby, twelve year old shins that now bled from new scratches that would scab like the old ones. She then painfully pulled herself up and tugged Molly along.

“Did I do it again?” Carrie asked as she was gently shaken awake. She was aware that her hand was on her rifle and was being held down tightly in Collin’s grip. He let her go, and she was relieved to find her hand had not reached for the trigger, but rather was wrapped tightly around Molly’s toy.

Collin shook his head, “No, but I didn’t want to startle you when I woke you. It’s your watch.”

They were on their third day of the scouting mission, and were spending the day in the last warren on their route. It would be sleeping out in the open, holed up, for the rest of the time they spent on this operation. Carrie followed him out of the small, dark room dug into the hill, and he led her to the sparse stand of trees where they had set up watch. She set down her rifle on its bipod, and hunkered down with it. She was surprised when he also sat down with her.

She gave him an inquiring look and finally spoke when he didn’t say anything for several minutes, “People go off mission all the time. Are you trying to find a way to finally tell me what the plan is? And, how much trouble we might be in when we complete it?”

“How many times did your team go off mission? You never seemed surprised at all.” Collin looked at the horizon, a troubled expression on his face.

“You know that I have rules, and probably figured out that I follow rules, but I didn’t lead the team. Bradley always countered my arguments by saying rules are made to be broken.” She rubbed her forehead, joining him in examining the view. “He believed that mission parameters were vague guidelines. Sometimes he went off the cuff and didn’t plan, but it usually worked. Captain Barber didn’t seem to mind that much, because he got results. However, that’s what eventually got him, everyone else and nearly me killed.” She turned to him with an impassive look on her face. “You act like you have a plan, so hopefully we won’t end up that way, too.”

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.” He grimaced and rubbed his eyes, “I’m not going to let those people be burned up one at a time.” Carrie could only nod in agreement. Collin turned to her and held her eyes as he continued, “We’ll do Captain Barber’s mission, but we’ll take a detour on the way home. And, if we run into any other horror show like we did last time, we take it out. I’m not going to walk away from anything like that ever again.”

Carrie smiled a little and reached over and squeezed his arm, “Good. Sounds like a plan.”

Chap VII: Cool Heart