Middle of the Road

14.1

The last thing she hears is Davis telling her not to fight it. 

The pain emulating, as far as she can tell, from her left side feels worse than anything she can remember. Worse than basic, worse than the drills and tests specifically designed to increase ones tolerance for suffering, worse than her pair of broken arms and worse even, and she feels herself slightly giggle, than that root canal or even the birth of her daughter. 

“This is a sonofabitch.” 

She is drifting past silent clouds, falling into a funneled darkness of synthetic distraction. Her senses are rapidly numbing as she fights to stay with the task at hand. She is torn between the responsibilities of her position and her deep, cellular need to escape the intense physical agony. There is also a spiritual component at play, a light shinning way to the port-side periphery attracting her attention as she digs her fingers into the dirt to stay grounded. ’Not yet, not now,’ she hears herself command, ‘we aren’t done here.’

Davis looks at his watch. With Cap, Old Floyd and Earl aboard the chopper heading towards the emergency facility, he estimates the return time to be less than twenty minutes. That, assuming everything goes smoothly. There would be complications, questions. Questions with dubious answers coming from a seriously injured civilian in army fatigues without id, numb from morphine and suffering from head and internal trauma. Davis would have to report to TOM. Quickly. 

Team Five consisted of seven highly trained and capable individuals. Cap and Saunders, running the point at the time of the incident, are down, one out of commission and the other about to join. Davis is now in command of the remaining five. The squad now consists of himself, specialists in communications, munitions, the EMT, and the new kid, young, raw, inexperienced, full of piss and vinegar, the basic grunt. 

The sirens announce with piercing emphasis that they are about to enter the picture. 

“Clean up fast and evacuate the scene,” Davis yells. “Get into the bush, and don’t move till I give the all-clear. Bryant give me a hand.” 

The communications officer Bryant scrambles to assist in the dragging of Saunders, now untethered from the ground, into the camouflage of thick Oregon Grape, Surge Laurel, Western Red Cedar and young hemlock. The others quickly do the same into the opposite side of the gravel road leaving Old Floyd’s smoldering pick-up as the only inorganic artifact. 

Old Floyd’s smoldering pickup…

And what appears to be Saunders’s cell phone not quite in the middle of the road.