Carlos was having a dream. Who or what it contained was not important — only that it was a good dream, and while he was in it, he was happy. Safe and secure. Before Carlos awoke, a mumbling cut into that dream, replaced the dream-person's words in a strange way that didn't fit.
Carlos blinked awake with the slow creep of a man reluctant to let go of what was in his mind. Reality came back into focus: he was seated on the floor, back against a metal desk, his arms crossed and head hung. He glanced around the strange room, dark and cramped and unfamiliar, hot with human breath. Someone was talking to themselves.
Kevin sat in front of him, his back to the Umbrella soldiers who slept on the other side of the room. Kevin was hunched over something in his lap, a pen in his hand.
Carlos looked up. Kennedy sat on the desk above him staring off into space, legs dangled over the side. Across the room on a cot, the woman with the braids smoked a cigarette, tapping her foot in time with a song he couldn't hear. Each lookout sat in silence while the chests and backs of the pile soldiers between them raised and lowered in slow, snoring breaths, the careless heavy sleep of bodies fed and rested and hydrated for the first time in what might have been days.
Kevin noticed Carlos' movement and shifted, uncomfortable. "I wake you up?"
Carlos stretched his back. "A little." He said, not unkindly.
"Sorry," Kevin frowned at the paper, wrote for a few moments longer then read it again, his expression unsatisfied.
"What're you workin' on?" Carlos asked, leaning the back of his head against the desk.
Kevin didn't respond. Not right away. He folded the paper three times. When it was as small as a bank card, he extended his hand to give it to Carlos, but then pulled it back. Finally, he passed the folded paper over, cringed like releasing it was painful.
"It's a letter." Kevin said after a moment, a seriousness in his tone that made Carlos pay attention. "For Alyssa. Y'know, in case…"
This made Carlos smile, a lopsided thing that pulled up one corner of his mouth. He knew Kevin was sweet on her, but this sort of concrete evidence of how sweet surprised him and didn't all at the same time. These sorts of farewell letters weren't for girls you just sorta kinda liked: they were I can't die without pouring out my heart material. Not first-date shit. Carlos leaned forward and took it from him. "I can give it to her, man. No problem."
Kevin was definitely not an ugly dude. He had a head of thick, shiny reddish-brown hair that he kept on the long side, only just starting to succumb to the faintest silver peppers around his temples. Surprisingly muscular and trim for a guy who didn't work out outside of PT at base, a fucking miracle for someone who smoked and drank and ate nothing but crap like Kevin did. Carlos didn't estimate that Kevin would have to pine over a girl for desperation's sake — he was a good looking dude, charming and funny. The life of the party. He had options. But it was starting to look like Kevin didn't want those options, despite all his jocular posturing. It was more serious than he had let on, at least from his side.
Kevin looked to him like he expected jeering, expected teasing. Carlos tucked the letter into one of the deep pockets inside on the side of his fatigue pants, made sure the pocket was closed and zippered tight.
"She's gonna be leaving soon," Kevin said. His gray eyes flickered away, down to the floor. He tried to mask the expression by removing his ballcap and smoothing his hair down, pulling the hat back down over his forehead. "So you may have to take it to California."
"Cali, huh. Not goin' with her?"
"It's not like that. I thought maybe, but…" he trailed off. "Don't matter now, though."
Carlos felt a slight pang of sympathetic sadness. "Sorry, man."
"You written one? I can take it to Jill, if you…"
"C'mon, don't think like that."
Kevin laughed, incredulous. "Nobody thinks they're gonna…" he trailed off again, "Our kind don't… we don't get to say goodbye. You know? They hear it from other people. But it should come from you." He was so simple in terms of curiosity, but also prone to spit out little pearls of wisdom, bounce them off your dome when you least expected them. It gave Carlos pause.
In the Marines and more so Umbrella's employ, the concept of one's own death became more of an eventuality. You courted it, proposed to it, but were not yet married to death — nevertheless the wedding bells rung for you all the same. They gave you advice on how to prepare: hefty life insurance plans. Updated wills. Appointing executors of your estate if you had anyone you trusted with that sort of control and had any estate to execute. With all his experience in that regard, Carlos had never written a farewell letter to anyone but his mom. He'd never been serious enough with any of the women he'd been with to warrant one.
Jill would be okay, of that Carlos was sure. She'd have zero problem finding someone else — in his easy way, that failed to bother him. Made him happy that she'd be happy no matter what. But the idea now wasn't just blackness forever and not having to pay bills anymore and his mother being sad; it was leaving out the door one day and just staying gone, and with him going a number of things he'd held close to his vest. About how she'd also go to her own rest sometime in the future without knowing them because of his belief there would be another day to say so.
Had the guy with the empty neck and the water jug told his girl he loved her before he left, or did he just assume she knew?
Kevin nudged Carlos, brought him back down to Earth.
"Maybe," Carlos said, "could you get it to 'em?"
"You mean Jill? 'Course," Kevin said, earnest. "I'm your guy."
"Alright. Here, pass me some of that paper."
Kevin did. Carlos stared at it for a good minute, drummed the pen against his leg, then picked it up and moved to somewhere more secluded, more private, and began to write. Kennedy watched him.
Carlos returned to Kevin a short time later with two folded pieces of paper. When Kevin didn't reach for them, Carlos offered them again. "Here," he said.
"I thought you said them. Who's the other one for?" Kevin raised an eyebrow. "…I ain't judgin' you, but I'm only making one trip to one girl. You got me?"
Behind them, Kennedy looked down and away, an unconvincing attempt to appear like he hadn't been eavesdropping.
"What? No—" Carlos said. "Just give 'em both to Jill. She'll get the other one where it needs to be."
"Okay…" Kevin said, suspicious, and accepted them.
"You should get some more rest, guys," Kennedy interjected from his perch on the desk, before Kevin could speak again. "You're up next, Kevin."
Kevin waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. "Yeah, yeah…" he said, and laid back down. Carlos crossed his arms again and settled back against the desk. He didn't fall back asleep right away, but eventually also succumbed.
Kennedy felt the intrusive crawl of eyes upon him and looked up; the mercenary officer was watching them, and something in her face had changed. Where before her glances were hard and dark and carnivorous, now they were open. Considering. They stared at each other for a long beat, two soldiers from opposing armies, the DMZ of sleeping bodies between them like a minefield. She lit up another cigarette and turned away.
Carlos nudged her side with the heavy, worn sole of his boot. The mercenary officer awoke with a violent start and a gasp. She tried to crawl back away from him, flattened herself against the wall. From her vantage point on the floor he was huge and imposing, all dark shadows under heavy Easter Island statue features. Her face was tense and her eyes darted around to locate her backup. Carlos quirked one eyebrow at her.
"Morning," Carlos took a step back, his index finger extended across the trigger guard of his rifle. He gestured with his other arm to her men; one was already huddled away with his arm crossed, the other struggling to shake the cobwebs from his head. "Your man fell asleep. Time to get up."
She climbed to her feet. Tentative, watchful.
"Alright," Behind Carlos, the FBC team stood in a readied arc with still, disapproving faces, their weapons held with their business ends towards the floor. They cut an intimidating figure: all dressed in black fatigue shirts that stretched up in turtlenecks just under their jaws, down to their wrists, cuffs overlapped by thin black leather gloves. Dark gray fatigue pants and kneepads, heavy boots that laced up to mid-shin. Between them they must have had twenty firearms and enough grenades to level an entire football stadium.
One of them had a lit cigarette that dangled from between his lips. Another flexed his fingers, as if readying them for use. The man before her was the largest of the lot, though she wasn't sure if he was the most dangerous. Wasn't sure if she could identify who was, something as normal to her as breathing, a fact that made her nervous.
"You been fed, watered, rested." Carlos said. "You've been gettin' kind of lazy, so we're gonna go for a little walk."
The two men to her side shot glances to each other. She continued to look forward.
"You'll give us back our weapons, then," she said.
Carlos laughed. "Nah. We've got enough firepower for everyone, don't worry. But you're gonna lead us to where the files are. You get us what we came for, well," he said, "we'll think about lettin' you go. Seems fair to me, considerin'."
"You're sentencing us to death, asshole," one of the men said, in a simmer, "you saw what they do to people with open wounds. No deal."
"You will do well to remember," she said, finally having had enough, "that I am the Liutenant. Not you. I make the deals. Now still your mouth before you get us all killed, and not just yourself."
"Trouble in paradise?" Kevin asked, bright and chipper.
"Shut your hole," the man fired back.
"Way I see it," Carlos cut in, "in 9 of 10 of the scenarios you got in this place, you're bug food. And that's the quick way. Without us you got no water, no food, no ammo, no weapons. I'm giving you a chance to get out of here, but nobody rides for free. You gotta pay your way out."
"Deal," she said. "If you do not agree," she said, turning to her men preemptively, "you are free to try to leave by yourselves. The Company does not pay me enough to die for them when they've left us here to wither and rot. Do you understand?"
They were quiet.
"Good," she said, and she strode past Carlos' men, broke their line and bumped shoulders hard with Kevin on her way out. "Come. We've already been here long enough."
"Least one of you's got some god damned sense," said one of Carlos' men as the mercenaries passed through the ranks to follow her.
They marched the Umbrella mercenaries down the hall. They took tentative, quivering steps, their eyes always on the ceiling. One of them stopped, and Kevin prodded him with the end of his rifle.
"Move," he said, "don't get cute."
They wound around corners and through corridors, down straight paths and through stairwells. But they never got lost. They knew exactly what they were looking for. They came to a large set of double shutters, corrugated silver metal, struck through with yellow and black warning paint.
WARNING
RESTRICTED AREA, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT
"There's those warm Umbrella fuzzies I remember," Carlos mumbled. "You got the codes?"
The woman just looked at him.
"Thought so. Unlock the door. You guys're almost home free."
"How do I know you don't kill us as soon as we're inside?" She asked.
"Guess you don't," Carlos said, "you'll just have to take me at my word. Unlock it."
She turned, hesitant. Then she dialed in a seven-digit code on the keypad. The sound of grinding metal and a great chu-chunk. The two doors slid open to either side of the jamb. Beyond was a room, large, but more than half of its space occupied by a massive bank of computers. Black carbon-fiber boxes with number locks were stacked from floor to ceiling. Enormous computer panels that played camera feeds and neon rat-maze maps of places far below. They all walked inside.
"Jesus," Kennedy said, looking around. "Look at all of this."
It took one second, one single second of his attention being stolen by the wall of monitors and dials and computer equipment for Kennedy's inattentiveness to alter the course of the team's history. In a single, lightning-quick lash of a hand, one of the mercenaries freed his auxiliary pistol from the tactical holster on his thigh. The other grabbed the officer from behind in a coordinated movement, yanked her back with a choking noise, her eyes wide. The first didn't aim the gun at the FBC team — he placed the barrel of Kennedy's pistol against the side of her head. The barrel hit her skin at the exact same moment as Kevin's pistol was out of his own holster and in his hand, aimed at the gunman's forehead.
"Drop it." Kevin said.
"He laughed. "You think you can get me before I get her, cowboy?"
"Fuck around and find out, you goose-stepping piece of shit." Kevin said.
"Let her go," Kennedy said, "she's your commanding officer. Think about what you're doing."
"What do you care?" The man said, "This has nothing to do with you. She stopped being my commanding officer the minute she decided to sacrifice us so you could get out of here alive. Now don't try anything funny, or you'll be picking bits of her skull out of your teeth."
Carlos wiped his upper lip with the knuckles of his glove. "You understand this mean's the deal's off," he said, "can't let you threaten someone under my custody and leave."
"You're goddamn right it's off," the man holding her said, "we didn't agree to it in the first place. That was this stupid bitch." He indicated her with a shake.
"Kevin," Carlos said to him, low, "if they so much as blink wrong in her direction, merc 'em."
"My pleasure," Kevin said.
Though she was held at gunpoint, long hands held aloft, the officer didn't look panicked. She blinked and jostled with a stern, composed expression. They wove in a wide circle around the proximity of the team, out of arm's reach.
"Give me your assault rifle," the man told Carlos, "now."
Carlos complied, knelt and slid it across the floor. The mercenary stopped it with his boot, then picked it up. Gave the pistol to his compatriot that held her.
"Such a hero," the man with Carlos' gun mocked, "that's why you're in here, and I'm leaving. You think your wounds are scabbed up enough for a return trip, Solenne? Guess we'll find out."
The mercenary officer — the woman they'd referred to as Solenne — walked with them, dragged backwards out of the room. Her face was solemn, evaluative, and she looked Carlos dead in his eyes.
Then she grabbed for the gun, but not to take it — to control it, the palm of her hand flat over the opening of the barrel. Pushed it up, away from her head. The man fired; her hand exploded outward in a shower of blood and meat and splinters of bone, and though she screamed in pain, she turned, sharp and fast, smeared the viscera down his face in a broad stripe. She placed her foot flat against his stomach and pushed him into the hallway and herself back onto the floor. The other man shot at her, barely missed. The rounds pinged off of the metal walls of the room behind.
The sounds of struggle and the smell of fresh blood brought them from their holes, clicking and squeaking with curious hunger. Kevin had a shot - a clear one - but forewent it to grab Solenne and drag her inside the room before one of the insects could bound onto her. Once her body was free of the meridian, the door shuttered closed with a mechanical thump. The monster outside banged against it, outraged. Screams sounded up and down the hallway, terrible screams of agony and horror. And then, there was silence.
Solenne panted and held her wrist, her blood departing her injured hand — which now looked more like an amputated wrist with dangling Halloween finger decorations loosely tied to it — onto the floor in tiny fountain-jet spurts. She let out a long, artful string of curses in French, clutching her arm.
"Probably gonna lose that hand," said their medic. He tied a tourniquet around Solenne's wrist, cinched it tight. "But you get points for pure ballsiness, I'll give you that."
At that, she chuckled, weak. "My piano playing days are over, yes?"
"Maybe half of 'em. She's good, Heavy."
Kevin gave her a cigarette and she drug on it thankfully, sat on the floor, groaning through gritted teeth. Kennedy looked at her hand.
"Might have to come off," Carlos said, "that's gonna bleed even if we try to burn it shut."
She nodded.
"You sure?" Kevin asked.
"Luckily I have an extra," she said, and looked to each of the men, considering, then settled on Carlos. "You. You hold me down. I would hurt your other men."
"Pff," Kennedy breathed, and he sounded offended.
She laid flat on the floor, one arm extended out to the side. Carlos knelt over her, sat on her hip bones and pressed his hands down onto her shoulders, leaned his weight on them. He tried not to meet her eyes, but in the way that someone's mind does exactly the thing they tell it not to, he did. She was looking dead at him with an expression that almost looked like amusement.
"Sorry," Carlos said, tried for a laugh. "Try not to get too excited, huh?"
"Don't worry," Solenne replied in her dry way, "you are not my type."
It was a messy affair, done in under a minute, but a long minute it was. Kevin had the unfortunate job after losing a game of rock/paper/scissors with one of the other men, who refused to let it go to three out of five no matter how he begged. One of them held the trails of fat and bone and muscle of her right hand flat against the floor. She screamed, bucked against the pain. Carlos rocked a bit, then leaned down harder, felt the bones of her shoulders creak under his palms.
Carlos made a noise of discomfort. "Just fuckin' do it, please."
It took two solid hacks with Kevin's machete to take the rest of her hand off, down to an angled stump of palm. Her body tried to kick Carlos off, wound and fought under him. Kennedy was ready with a can of spray, rattled it, then coated what remained. The smell of alcohol and greenery filled the air, wilted and died. She screamed again, foreign words through ragged breaths and grits of her teeth. Her open flesh sizzled and bubbled, settled down to a solid plank of pinkish-brown scar tissue. Burnt shut. Kennedy nudged Carlos out of the way, then emptied the rest of the can into the slash marks that danced across her armor. Waste not, want not.
Solenne panted, her eyes squeezed shut. It was a long time before she spoke again. "You," she ordered, pointing to Kevin, "another smoke, please."
Kevin laughed, extended a hand and helped her stand. "You got it."
While they spoke and lit cigarettes, Kevin's hands braced on her shoulders. She nodded affirmatives to his questions. Carlos and Kennedy looked around the room. Carlos rubbed his face.
"I'll get to work scanning it all and sending it to control." Kennedy said. "Could be a few hours. There's a lot here."
"Pretty sure we got what we came for," Carlos nodded, "now just to get back out. Fuck of a day, man."
Kennedy patted Carlos' shoulder, a gesture of caring that came as a surprise. Kennedy was a good dude, a good soldier, smart and sharp and hellishly athletic, but socially, wasn't the easiest to read most of the time. Awkward and stilted and forceful in the way that made people seem sort of stuck-up.
Carlos looked over to him.
"Go sit down and take a rest. I'll handle this." Kennedy said, and then added something that struck Carlos as strange, though he discarded it as nothing as soon as it came: "You've got a lot on your mind."
They spent the next four hours checking each other over for injuries, down to paper cuts or hangnails. Anything that bled got sealed with spray or electrical tape over a layer of gauze. When that was exhausted, some of them sat down to eat and then rest; some of them played cards from a pack the medic had brought along. Solenne watched Kennedy as he worked, interested as he connected his small palm-set contraption to each computer bank in an organized route, drained its information, then waited for it to upload. The hours crawled. Two became four became six became eight. Then, Kennedy stood, ground his knuckles into his eyes, and said:
"We're good. It's all gone, and I managed to jam the door open upstairs. Our path's clear."
"Good job, nerd," Kevin grunted and climbed to his feet. His knees clicked. "Let's quit this place."
Carlos stretched his lower back, hands above his hips; it was starting to give him more problems these days, tiring and cramping easier. His vertebrae popped, and he sighed. "Alright. We all—"
A shriek sounded, cut him off. The wail of a siren, a great calamitous WEE OOH WEE OOH of a noise that split his hearing, ground into his brain. The blue lights around them flickered red, like blood.
"Remote destruct sequence engaged. Beginning countdown. Please evacuate in an orderly fashion as outlined in your employee manual. Remote destruct sequence engaged. Beginning countdown…"
"What kinda sci-fi bullshit…" he mumbled, looking around at the ceiling.
"What the fuck?!" One of the men yelled, at Kennedy. The floor trembled like it had caught a chill. "What the fuck did you do?!"
"I… I didn't do anything," Kennedy yelled back, over the noise. "There was no remote destruct program on any of the computers, and…"
"Come!" Solenne said, "We've not much time."
"She's right. We'll figure out what happened later," Carlos called, "right now we gotta get the fuck out of here."
The door slid open on its rails, a phhhssstt of air. The hallway was bathed blood red, emergency flood lights having switched on for the occasion.
"Alright, everyone out!" Carlos yelled, "I'll cover your back. Go!"
They didn't need to be reminded. Solenne sprinted through the hall and was gone as soon as the words left his mouth, and they followed her, their shadows dancing skeletal against the wall. Her sure steps were followed by the medic, the supply ordinance, and their backup firepower. Kevin followed after, jumping the steps three at a time. As Kevin passed through the hallway, movement from the walls began to squirm and undulate; legs by pairs seemingly infinite started to appear, ghoulishly and impossibly long, feeling for grip on the steel. The two mercenaries lay in a tangle, one on top of the other, the corpse that Carlos could see desiccated and sunken under the ruby lights. They had tried to run. Were almost free.
"Fuck," Carlos cursed, and shoved Kennedy by his back, up the stairs, "get fucking moving, here they come—"
A rattle of assault rifle fire clattered through the air. Something burst in Kennedy's side, exploded in a spray of blood that cast black against the floodlights. Dark wiggling chunks of something important against slapped against the stairs. He clutched his flank, eyes wide, his young face shocked at its own mortality — and then he fell onto that face against the point of a stair in front of him. Three rounds from the burst hit Carlos' right shin, tore through the large round muscles of his calf from behind. He felt the bone give out into pieces, sent him to the stairs under his own weight. He dragged himself on top of Kennedy, brandished his pistol, and fired back — the second mercenary had hid under the corpse of the first, and though the floor was doused with his blood, he was still alive, despite how they tried to burrow to him.
Kevin stopped at the apex of the stairs, shocked into stillness by the unexpected sound of gunfire. He doubled back. "Heavy?!"
"NOW NOBODY GETS OUT!" The mercenary yelled. "MOTHERFUCKERS!"
A cloud of them were upon him, and his screams sounded like laughter.
"Kennedy," Carlos said, slapped him in the jaw. "Kennedy, answer me."
Kennedy said nothing, his eyes closed, lips slightly parted. His head rocked back and forth. Behind Carlos, the chitinous clink of a leg against metal. Then two. Then hundreds. The trembles of the floor became shakes. They flooded the hallway, jockeying for position to feast upon the man at their dumb supper even as the hallway shook and broke apart at the seams. The stairway canted, turned down by a degree, its floor now cracking along the connection to the support beams.
Their attention turned to the splash of viscera on the stairs, the open wounds on Carlos' leg.
"Get him out!" Carlos called to Kevin, tried to crawl to a stand against the wall. They flooded and piled and tried to jump across the gap. Others skittered on the walls, found an alternate route. "Evac! Now!"
"What about y—" Kevin protested.
Carlos knew what had to happen — Kennedy was a good fifty, sixty pounds lighter than him. Kennedy also had the evidence. It was clear who had a better shot at the evac and who didn't.
"Don't make me pull rank, motherfucker," Carlos yelled, "I'm right behind you! Get him and go!"
Kevin made to argue, horror plain on his face — perhaps at the scene before him, reality being tilted on its axis. Perhaps at the choice he was being forced to make. Kevin screamed a curse of frustration, grabbed Kennedy up, hoisted him onto his shoulders. Kevin trudged away up the steps with Kennedy's long limbs dangled over his shoulders like ribbons that twisted in the wind, the unconscious man's mop of stringy blond hair obscuring his face. His blood, free and running and vital, soaked the back of Kevin's shirt, and they disappeared around the corner.
Carlos followed them on his single leg, dragging himself up the stairs on his elbows and knees. A host of the bugs followed, tried to squeeze into the empty space of the hallway. Even at a run Carlos most likely wouldn't have gotten out of here on time; crawling as he was, as much as he tried, dragging the dead weight of his leg was another struggle entirely.
"Where's Heavy?!" He heard one man cry in the distance, nearly drowned out by the sirens, but couldn't place their voice over the rumbling and then ringing in his ears.
"He'll be fine!" Said another. "Just go!"
Carlos dropped his pistol and threw a grenade. It flew sloppy and hit the stair, bounced at a side angle and exploded, plastered the wall with a paste of bug legs and yellow entrails and squirming larvae. He turned and hobbled up the steps, barely caught himself on the wall as the staircase twisted and buckled, the world falling in disorienting angles around him.
Carlos cursed in surprise, and the last step fell from beneath his knees; he hit the plateau of the treatment room on his elbows, yawning nothingness beneath his feet. He pulled himself up, grabbed for anything stable as the building shook like an earthquake, lights and stretchers and desks squealing across the floor and rocking on their mountings. The single gurney beside the IV pole stood like a silent soldier standing guard, determined to keep its post. He tried to pull himself up against it, but the blood loss and movement made his body weak. He shook and faltered and hit his chin on the railing on the way down, forced back to a kneel. Proposing to death again — no. This time, he was pulling up her veil, ready for a great big smack straight on the lips.
They hear it from other people, said Kevin's voice in his mind, strangely calm, but it should come from you.
Carlos shook his head. "Fuck." And then inside his brain, or maybe his heart, he apologized.
A flash, black and slippery and fast like a shadow met him in the middle of that room. The eyes that met his made him start, and it was only after a second of forcing his brain to still that he realized it was a person.
"Come!" Solenne yelled, and ratcheted her arms under his armpits, pulled him to his feet and propped herself under him like a crutch, dragged him with her. She was tall and wiry and surprisingly strong, and his body leaned against her hard. "No goodbye letters today!"
"You—" Carlos breathed, hobbling on his one good leg. Drug his other. His head leaned against the rough, yarnlike consistency of her braids. "You were supposed to…"
"You are not my commanding officer," she replied, sharply, "your orders mean nothing to me. Come! Fast, fast!"
Carlos pushed with his foot and they ran. The malicious clock-tick of feet filled the world and then there was stillness, like the eye of a hurricane.
When the blast sounded, the world was white and ringing and ethereal, and then impossibly hard and painful. Everything smelled like dirt, tasted like blood. Wounds ripped open on Carlos' arms and he was sent rolling side over side over side, stopped with a savage blow against the stiff, rough roots of a tree. After moments that stretched into hours, Carlos propped himself on his elbows, his head lolling, weak on his neck. He kicked at the dirt with his toes to see if he still had both his legs — from the way one of them screamed, it appeared he still had both. Technically.
Where there once stood a clinic, now there was a sinkhole filled with rocks of all sizes, dirt and silt and mud that smoked and smoldered like a massive campfire, dying and puffing against the night air and the stars. The ground had tilted by one or two degrees, no longer flat.
"He…" Carlos squeaked. His voice broke. He swallowed. "HEAD COUNT." He called.
"Here," Kevin said. He then waved Kennedy's unconscious hand and said, "Present."
"Yup." "Here…" "I'm not here, don't count me."
"Fils de pute," Solenne panted, and though Carlos didn't know French, he knew a curse when he heard one.
May 28, 1999
Quito, Ecuador
South American hospitals were… different. The nurses all wore skirts, matronly numbers that hit them at mid-shin, the colorful scrubs of American medicine eschewed for a more formal sort of attire. The food was good, but too spicy for most of the team to get down on with any sort of regularity or enjoyment — they ended up hitting a McDonalds for every meal, and left Carlos to his hospital food.
The staff tried to speak to Carlos in Spanish, first — understandable. Carlos was relieved when they replied to him in Portuguese instead, a language a few of them seem to be trained in. They ended up staying for six days, waiting for Kennedy to stabilize; they'd had to surgically take out a portion of his large intestine, and the bullet had stolen a hefty chunk of his liver. At first, with precious little medical knowledge outside battlefield triage and hangover cures, Carlos was convinced this was a death sentence. The doctors informed him this was the best case scenario; your liver apparently grew back, which seemed odd and freaky to him, but was confirmed by their medic. The other things the man came close to hitting, like his spine, did not. By the fourth day Kennedy was up and around, but in clear and constant pain, one arm always slung over his midsection unless he stayed doped up on the pills they'd given him.
Carlos hobbled on pair of crutches and tried to balance on the foot bump of his bulky white cast to the end of the pier, where Solenne waited for her boat, chatting happily with the rest of the crew. She wore a pair of jeans, flip flops, a button down shirt over a tank top. Looked normal, compared to them.
The wooden slats of the dock creaked under Carlos' weight as he made his way down to meet them.
"Nice of you to join us, Tripod," said one of the men.
"Big talk for a man who don't have two metal weapons in hand at any one time."
Solenne laughed. One of her teeth was capped in the same bright gold as the ring on the wedding finger of her left hand. "You, with no foot, me, with no hand. We almost make a, uh, whole person?"
"That's right," Carlos chuckled. "You sure you'll be good?"
She shook her head. "Don't be worried about me, Staff Sergeant. I'm not."
Carlos nodded, extended his hand to shake. Realized he had the wrong one, then re-arranged his crutches and extended the other. They all laughed at him. Solenne shook it.
"Thanks," Carlos said, "for everything."
"Pff," she scoffed, "it is me who should be thanking you. Now we are simply even."
She extended a hand to Kevin and he tilted his head as if to say aw, come on and extended his hands for a hug. She gestured her stump as if to bring him closer. They shook her good hand and offered hugs in turn. The dinging of a bell sounded and a small craft cut the waters, pulled up to port, bobbed upon the water with cheerful enthusiasm, waves lapping at its rusty brown paint.
She picked up her bag, hefted it onto a shoulder, and climbed aboard over a plank that operated as a ramp. Solenne blew them a kiss and waved as the boat pulled away.
"Bonne chance, boys!" She called, then disappeared around the corner of its small cabin. Kennedy sighed.
"What a week," he said.
The men mumbled in tired agreement.
"Who wants to get a beer?" Kevin asked.
Kennedy glared at him. "My liver, asshole."
"Oh," Kevin said. "Well, Kennedy's out. Who else wants to get a beer?"
Carlos shook his head. They needed precious little prompting to return to their bickering and japes. He left them to it, followed on his crutches, his bad leg held behind him. Quito was a beautiful city, but he felt a gnawing. A call for return. It was alien to Carlos — not so long ago he could have lost himself in a place like this, spent weeks if he would have been allowed to, sucking the marrow of all the culture had to offer with wonder and excitement. Now it felt off, just slightly, like he wasn't where he should be.
Kennedy fell behind the team as they talked and joked and yelled at each other. He walked beside Carlos, kept his pace.
"You feelin' okay?" Carlos asked. Kennedy nodded, then looked ahead, a strange sort of expression in his eyes that Carlos couldn't place.
"Something's bothering me." Kennedy said. He took a deep breath in, like he was about to say something hard and important. "You shouldn't have done that. You're—" he stopped himself at the look on Carlos' face, then doubled back and said instead, "you've got someone to go back to. I don't. You should have taken the stuff and gotten out."
"Well, I didn't," Carlos said, "we all know the risks. Guess you'll just have to find it in your heart to forgive me."
Kennedy stared at him. Carlos considered that the end of it, when the younger man spoke again.
"There's something else. Captain Harris hasn't tried to make contact with us since we left. No check ins, no requests for report. Nothing. Then there was the clean-up team, and the… the hole. It's too coincidental."
Carlos agreed with him, had the exact same line of thought, but didn't want a mutiny on his hands — moreover, if HQ knew that they knew, he wanted to be back on American soil and not have their supply lines and route home cut off. "We'll get it cleared up when we get back," Carlos lied, "sure it's the signal being weak, or somethin'. You know?"
Kennedy looked unconvinced, but no further fight came.
"Maybe," Kennedy said. "That's probably it."