POCKET CHANGE
by Sharon R.

Chapter Fifteen
The Killing Field

With his eyes finally focused, Carter got a good look at Luka's legs. Then using his body to move the tall blades of grass, he was able to get to Luka's upper body. His heart sank. Carter collapsed back on his heels, his head falling forward. He was alone. No matter how determined he had been earlier to stay strong and focused - to end this chapter of his life, and maybe even, perhaps, to close the book - he found himself in a place that bottomed him out. Alone took on a new meaning.

All along, it was Luka who was the physically stronger of the two, the one who had what it took to get the both of them out of the jungle alive. But looking at Luka, at the blood matting his dark hair and the obvious brain matter on his shoulder, Carter knew that he not only was left to die alone, but to watch his friend decay into the earth first. He fell back onto his bottom and tried to collect himself, to regroup, make a plan.

He was surrounded by thick overgrowth and towering trees whose exceedingly wide foliage veiled the tint and tenor of the sky. Roads or paths, if they existed, were well hidden from him. The earlier rain gave way to heavy humidity and equally annoying insects of which Carter was helpless to protect himself against, jolting his body to and fro hoping to escape the critters, but ultimately reacting with tic-like movements as they bit into his exposed flesh. His fingers throbbed and hands ached from the taut rope cuffing them together, his body having just recovered from extreme dehydration, threatening to fail once more.

So he sat there.

The backside of his pants was now as soaked from the wet soil as the front was from his recent illness. With no one to talk to, with no one to make useless plans with, he was relegated to sitting in his piss soaked pants, his arms tied behind his back at his elbows and wrists severely limiting his ability to move. Giving up was a rational option considering his situation, and Carter certainly qualified given his physical condition. But he was far from giving up.

He fell back hoping to find a rock to scrape against the ropes. He squirmed around, his painful shoulders protesting, raw back flinching as his skin stretched over bones, his exhausted body not lasting more than a few moments. Failing, he looked back at the motionless Luka again finding the irony in his death after it was Carter himself who had been tortured all along. Both lying motionless thousands of miles from home under the same sky but only one with a heartbeat. His hope waned as he looked up from his prone body at the enormity of the jungle he would have to traipse his way out of. A quick inventory of his emotions found him to be conflicted to the point of apathy. He was no longer a prisoner, yet unable to free himself, unable to survive alone, he was a prisoner of his own body.

So he laid there.

Even that was uncomfortable with the weight of his body pressing against his elbows, arms and hands. Carter stared up through the green shroud at the bits and pieces of the blue sky that peeked in and around the thick white clouds. Closing his eyes, he desperately searched for a peaceful memory, just one. Unlike Luka, Carter had few to pick from and envied how Luka was able to pull those beautiful memories from such a vast collection and live in it, to make the memory a sweet healing of the present. For Carter most of his searches came up flat. Nothing bad, nothing great. There was that time when Bobby pushed him out of the tree. Carter smiled as he remembered how he tried to convince his mother that he fell, just to save Bobby from punishment.

"I fell, Mom. Bobby was nowhere near me. Really."

His mother held him on her lap, Carter almost too big to be there anymore. His arm hurt when he moved and he held it to his stomach. His mother held an ice bag to his arm while tucking his head into her neck. He loved her smell and never forgot it. A short while later his father walked in the door. It was the middle of the day and his father made a special trip home to check on John!

"How are you, little man?"

The flies buzzed around Carter's face and invaded his sweaty skin as he closed his eyes and continued to wrap himself in the warm feeling of this memory.

"Does it hurt much?" John looked up into his smiling father's eyes then snuggled back into the warmth of his mother. It doesn't get better than this.

He smiled.

"Close your eyes, little man, and think of a wonderful place." His father's big hand on his shoulder, his calm strong voice was comforting. "Someplace that makes you feel happy and safe."

But he didn't need to close his eyes. He was there.

As his father rubbed John's back he leaned in above him and whispered, "We had better get moving, Eleanor. They are expecting us at the museum opening."

He was handed off to the nanny. Gamma met them at the hospital later, but he always remembered how he was relegated to being less than equal in importance with the museum that day, yet the small bit of time in that kitchen with his mother and father holding him, his dad calling him "little man", made a lasting impression, happy and sad at the same time.

The silence of the moment was suddenly broken as Carter's eyes flew open in reaction to a sound that came from Luka's direction. A raspy sound. Probably agonal, the body's last reflex of escaping air. Carter rolled onto his side and hitched himself like an inchworm over to the body. He was still in the same position and Carter questioned if he had imagined it. But at that moment he noticed Luka's bound hands in the small of his back flinch. That alone startled him, but not when Luka did it again, this time accompanied by a distinct moan. Now what? Carter wondered what he could possibly do for someone with a gunshot wound to the head so severe that it exposed brain matter. Nothing. But should he be making sounds?

"Luka?" Carter cleared his throat and tried again. "Luka?"

Luka picked his head up and spit the accumulated grime and bugs out of his mouth, nearly retching. "What…? Aaargh… My head hurts."

He was talking?

"Luka, hold still, don't move. You, ah… you've been, ah… shot…"

Carter scanned Luka's body as he made obvious purposeful movements and spoke. Nothing he was ever aware of could happen after such a devastating injury.

"… in the head…"

"What? No - I don't think so." Luka struggled to rub the blindfold off his head in the same way Carter had. "But, damn, it hurts." His head was turned and, with the first look at light since the firefight at the creekbed, Luka was squinting hard trying to focus on Carter. "Can you untie my hands?"

Carter turned on his other side and scooted up higher until they were back to back and his hands met Luka's. It took some time, but he finally managed to get the fabric loosened enough that Luka could slip his hands free before collapsing to the ground. "I can't believe that you can do this, I mean…"

Luka returned the favor by freeing Carter's hands and elbows of their own restraints releasing his arms but bringing a new pain to his body as he slung his limp lower arms in front of him for the first time that day, cradling them to his body. Looking at Luka he was stunned to see that he suffered only head pain. "Luka, you have blood all over the back of your head, and…"

"I think I got hit pretty hard. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a good laceration back there."

Luka put his fingers to his head to assess the situation.

"No, I mean on the back of your shoulder, there's…," Carter had a hard time saying it but motioned to Luka's right shoulder, "… there's, um, brain matter." He raised his eyebrows at Luka almost admitting the absurdity of the possibility.

Luka turned his head and pulled on his shirt to check on Carter's claim, surprising himself with what he saw, letting out a tentative nervous laugh. "It can't be. I…"

Carter stood high on his knees to check Luka's head, finding only the laceration that Luka had expected. "There's just a lac here. It needs sutures, but that doesn't explain the, ah… you know."

Without an explanation, with the sudden change in situation, the two sat and silently mulled over their next step. They said nothing but looked at each other, daring the other to be the first to stand tall and appraise the surroundings. Luka was first, wobbly, holding his head hoping to stifle the intense pain. He held his hand out to Carter, then realized his mistake when Carter gave him a raise of the eyebrows. Walking behind him, Luka lifted him to his feet by supporting him around the chest. The tall growth of jungle appeared to recede in the distance. Looking around they saw the total lack of civilization, flowing water and roads. They took several steps to get a better view when Luka stumbled on something.

Feet.

Looking down, separating the tall grasses and leaves with his hands, Luka found where the mysterious brain matter had come from. Another man had been with them. Another man had taken a bullet to the head. The two got down on their knees again, this time to find out who had been at their side.

"Oh, God." Luka sat down, gently removing what was left of the man's blindfold. He knew even before the badly deformed face was completely exposed.

"What is it?" Carter was still at the man's legs, but squatted to look Luka in the face. Then as Luka wiped away leaves that had adhered to the blood soaked face and removed what looked like a gag from the man's mouth, he, too, realized.

"Joseph?"

Luka laid his aching head in his arms propped over his knees. "They had him. All along they had him."

The three men remained as such for some time: Luka sitting in shock next to Joseph's body, Carter standing in silence not knowing what to say or do.

"We should go." Carter looked for a reaction from Luka, but got nothing. "Luka, don't you think we should take advantage of the daylight before they start playing war again? There's nothing we can…"

"I can't leave him here."

Carter moved closer to Luka, squatting down to break into his personal space. "We can't take him with us," he spoke calmly, "neither one of us is up to that physically. Huh? Luka?"

Luka shot up, Carter followed as he walked frantically in circles pushing Carter away, not wanting to face reality. "I can't leave him here." Luka thread his fingers through his hair combing it back from his dirty and bloodied forehead. "I'll stay, you can send somebody back for us."

"What?" Carter followed Luka as he finally halted his pacing, staring down at Joseph. "I can't do this alone. Does it look like I'm capable of waltzing through the Congo and making it to the other side of whatever the hell this is?" Luka's gaze seemingly ignored Carter's plea for basic survival. "He's dead, Luka, and us getting out of here alive won't change that."

Carter backed off. "We're right back at the beginning," he mumbled. "You just going to ignore me?" Carter was livid now. "I don't get you. You talk all big about courage, and being proud, but when it comes to this you can't see past it? You just going to quit?" Luka remained unaffected by the words - plea actually. "This is exactly what Jules wanted, don't you see that?" With still no reaction, Carter prepared to go it alone. "Buy me a fucking clue Luka, 'cause I have no idea what's going on in your head." But he did.

Carter turned and forged through the thick growth, finding his way out over the previously trampled growth, then stumbled hard on a root. Not able to catch himself his fall echoed through his body thumping an older bruise on his hip. Getting to his feet alone was miserably hard and a few more feet down the path he realized that he would never make it alone and turned back.

Luka wavered between anger and grief and shutting Carter out was his way of channeling those feelings. He sat there unable to move, frozen in emotion but furious with himself.

"I can't do this alone." Carter had come back. "You know, I thought you were dead and I sat there too, just like you now." Carter looked up at the sky and laughed out loud. "Why does it have to be this way?" he shouted at the entity he had hoped was up there somewhere. "Luka, I need your help, please."

Luka finally looked up at him and Carter noticed his eyes were different. They carried a deep sadness, a helpless sadness, and Carter averted his eyes away, but in doing so, caught site of something on Joseph's bound hands. Bending down he straightened the fingers of the hand and saw the faded words on the palm written in ink:

I MADE IT

"Luka. It looks like Joseph wanted to let us know something."

Luka crawled over to see for himself.

Carter put his hand on Luka's shoulder hoping to get him back, hoping that he, too, would want to live again. "Don't you think Joseph would want us to try and make it too? It's not always about saving someone else." Carter turned the tables to try to get Luka to look at the bigger picture. "Sometimes that change can make the hole in your pocket open up if you forget to care about yourself."

Luka untied Joseph's hands and gently placed them at his side before helping Carter up.

"Let's go, Carter."

Luka looked back as they walked out of the field, the killing field, as he would remember it. He would go with Carter to make sure he got out alive, but didn't really care if he made it himself. He was numb, unable to care about himself anymore. "Let's just walk down hill, see where it takes us."

They walked for a couple hours, stopping occasionally to rest. Carter did his best but the nausea made an appearance again, his legs quivering as the dry heaves took him over.

"You want to keep going?" Luka asked.

"Yeah - I'm not giving up."

They found a rudimentary road - more like ruts torn through by spinning truck tires. For a lack of any other set direction to take they followed the road for a while until a noise in the trees caught their attention.

"You hear that?" Carter motioned to his right.

"Yeah. Whatever it is, it has been following us for a while."

"You thinking what I am?"

"Uh-huh." Luka glanced at Carter and tilted his head slightly. "GO."

Before they could get very far, a man broke out of the tree line and ran at them with a gun, raging, jabbing the end of the weapon in their direction. Putting their hands in the air, they were hit with a realization that raised the stakes. It was the same man that Carter pissed off, the one who brought the child to Luka for treatment.