Chapter 3~Devastations

Williams blinked hard to regain whatever scrap of consciousness he had left after the explosion, his blurry vision picking up the vague shape of a jeep rolling at what seemed like a thousand MPH towards him. He sat up with some difficulty as every bone in his body was aching like crazy, and wiped a hand across his blood-stained face. He moved his fingers and toes around, before moving on to his arms and legs and thanked whatever Gods there might be that he hadn't broken anything. Vision fully restored, he looked up at the jeep as the driver jumped out. A girl in a very short pair of hotpants and a vest, who he presumed was Doctor Holland, ran towards him and stretched out a hand, helping him up.

"Sergeant Williams, yeah?" she asked. He nodded stiffly

"I'm guessing Becker told you?"

"No, it's written on your shoulder. What happened here?" Williams coughed.

"I have no idea, my first guess would be a load of frag grenades, wired up to a very badly aimed bomb, but I haven't had a chance to look around yet," Holland sprang into action immediately.

"Ok, well I can see you're fine for now, so go through this mess and find anyone who isn't seriously injured. Get about a dozen of them shifting anyone who is to my jeep; Lou'll be along soon with a van to get them back to the hospital. Get the rest of them putting out these fires!" halfway through her speech, she began running off in the direction of the most carnage. It seemed that one half of the camp had avoided the worst of the blast, so Williams began his search there, finding people to help him. About ten minutes later, the heavy-wheeled sound of a van came out of the distance and Lou jumped out, opening the back and pulling foldable beds out with him.

"Where's Holland?" he called out to the first person he saw. He shrugged and pointed vaguely to a battered, torn tent, where Lou promptly ran off to. He found her attempting to shift a man out from under a bed. He picked up the bed and threw it as gently as he could manage to the other end of the tent.

"Thanks," she muttered. "Get him in the van, will you?" Lou supported the man over his shoulder and helped him limp over to the beds that the removal crew had already brought out. He saw the horrified looks on their faces and felt sorry for them, they had evidently been spared the cruel reality of war until now. He found Maria holding a conversation with someone he didn't know, and ran over to them.

"...fine, but that's not the issue, at least not the most important one. We need to get these people back to the hospital," she paused when she saw Lou.

"I've phoned the guys down at the main hospital," he said "They're going to be down here as quickly as the jeeps will go," Maria nodded.

"Ok, we need a head count," she indicated to the uniformed man standing next to her. "Lou, this is Sergeant Williams, Williams this is Lou," Williams and Lou exchanged nods. "I need you, seeing as you know everybody, to get everyone accounted for. I don't care how, as long as I find out who's missing in no more than a minute," Williams ran off to the jeep and van, calling to everyone who wasn't busy with the fires around the camp. Maria sighed deeply and closed her eyes for a long moment.

"You OK?"

"Yeah, just... letting it sink in, you know?"

"Kinda,"

"Well, no need to stand here gormlessly. We need to get everyone who needs it onto those beds and into the van, then back to base. Thankfully, there are only a few really serious injuries," Maria sighed again before regaining her composure as Williams came running up to them.

"We have everyone. Well, except one,"

"Who are we missing, Sergeant?"

Maria Holland's heard stopped momentarily as Williams uttered one name:

"Becker,"

The first thing Becker registered when the dim light of consciousness poked him with a dirty and unwanted fingernail was pain. Mind-numbing, piercing pain, searing down his back. He was lying on his front, probably under something, and he could vaguely make out the sticky mass swarming around him, which he presumed was his own blood. He tried to move and get up on his knees, but his body wasn't having that. The most important thing on his mind was not slipping back under. Not falling back into the subconscious. If he did that, he doubted he would make it out again. Suddenly, through the silence, he heard a shout. One, desperate shout coming from a familiar voice close to him.

"Becker!" it said, and he felt arms around his shoulders and saw the blurred and deformed edge of a dusty, purple shoe. At least, he thought it was purple. He heard the voice again, right next to him, clearer this time but only slightly.

"Becker, can you hear me?" he attempted some form of reply, but that wasn't going to happen either. He could hear the voice shouting to someone else, but he couldn't make out what it was saying. There were more voices now, they were slipping away from him, slowly at first, but fading away quicker and quicker. Knowing he was in safe hands, he allowed himself to fall away again, allowed the voices to fade completely. The last thing he registered was being pulled upwards by more than one pair of strong hands and lifted onto a stretcher bed. Then, nothing.

"Get him in my jeep," Maria said. She was being very calm, ridiculously calm, and Lou knew that she was trying very, very hard not to break down. He also knew that she wouldn't let herself snap, because if she did, it would mean the first life she hadn't been able to save, and he knew she wouldn't let that person be Becker. Anyone else, and she would consider it slightly OK, only slightly, but not Becker. Lou could read Maria like a book when her mind was set like this, and he had a very strong feeling that if she lost Becker, if he was the first person she had ever lost, she would probably explode. Explode and then go into a sulk for about a week. Actually, Lou didn't know what Maria would do. All he knew for absolute certain was that he didn't like the look that was slowly seeping into her emerald green eyes. He told Williams to supervise getting all the other casualties to the hospital and climbed behind the wheel of the jeep.

"What are you doing?" Maria's voice was cold, hard and steel-edged.

"I'm driving, because when you're in a mood like the one you're in, you can't even think straight, let alone drive straight. And besides, you'll need a hand," Maria shrugged and slid into the passenger seat, after checking that Becker was securely attached in the back. Lou put the jeep in drive and put pedal to floor, driving at a speed that was unsafe even in the vast emptiness of the desert. They covered the half-mile in less than a minute and pulled up right outside the hospital's front door-flap. Lou and Maria didn't need to tell each other what needed to happen; they had worked together for so long that each one knew what the other wanted doing and went and did it without any verbal communication needed.

The following half-hour dragged so slowly that Lou was convinced it was more like three. He didn't want to remember much about it. He remembered firing a few words at the other doctors that had arrived from the main hospital, telling them to meet Williams and see to what the wounded needed. He remembered seeing Becker's injury properly, and for the first time ever feeling like he wanted to faint. He also remembered, however, that as soon as Maria had entered the hospital, she was all business. He remembered her ordering him around, fetch this, and fetch that. He didn't mind. He also remembered staring in disbelief at the gaping hole in Becker's back, and asking her if she really was intending to stitch that up. She'd told him to be quiet and find her some surgical thread and a needle. A few very long and very shaky minutes later, Maria had somehow managed to restore Becker to a man again, and was now sitting in her office staring in a trance at the Rubix cube she was toying with in her hand. Lou was on his third bottle of beer since they'd finished, and was certain that they had something to do with the headache slowly creeping up on him, but he was beyond caring. Maria had said that only time would tell if Becker would live, and she had locked herself away ever since. Williams sat down on the bed next to Lou, awakening him from his thoughts.

"So she managed it, huh?"

"Dunno yet, won't really know till he either wakes up or doesn't,"

"Why don't you go get some rest, I'm pretty sure he's not going anywhere and I'll tell you the second he wakes up,"

Lou looked into Williams' eyes and nodded, suddenly realising that he hadn't slept in at least thirty hours.

"You know what? I might just do that," he handed his beer to Williams and managed to only get to his sofa before collapsing onto it.