Chapter XVI: Camp Afghan
Feburay 11, 2535 (UNSC Calendar)/
Camp Afghan, Olimpia, Jericho VII, Jericho
I pushed the semi-collapsed gate out of my way as I entered the perimeter of the camp. The sign designating it as Camp Afghan had been riddled with holes, probably from spikers or needlers, brutes had been here. Not good. I looked around at the ruins that were once my entire world.
The warthogs were nothing but burnt out husks, their turret cannons either bent or broken. Marine bodies lumped over sideways, blood dripping from their wounds. There were the bodies of unarmored recruits, rifles still in their arms. They barely had a warning when the Covenant attacked. There were numerous grunt bodies, so there had been a fight here, and not a massacre. There was the occasional body of a brute here and there, so my earlier suspicions proved to be right. I walked around the wasteland. Careful not to step on the bodies of any humans, it was harder than it might sound, there were sections of the ground that were completely carpeted with bodies.
I heard a noise, I was to shellshocked to really take cover, I turned to see a surprised-looking grunt staring at me. I shot it without breaking my stride, breaking the deadly silence of the place. I walked around aimlessly for a while, before deciding to head out to the residential section of the camp, where trainers and officers lived.
Afghan street, as that zone was called, was relatively undamaged, there were holes in the walls of the houses here and there, and one house was on fire, cars were positioned to serve as cover or barricades. I saw Mrs. Flanaghan, the old lady next door and the wife of the commanding officer of the camp. She had always been nice, giving me cookies she baked or a slice of apple pie. She told me of how much she missed her children, who had gone to fight insurrectionists after joining the UNSC. She was always nice to me, now she was lying on the street, her hand still gripping the car's door handle, with a dozen spiker rounds on her back. I shook my head and walked on. I could see other dead bodies on the street, from officers that had tried to protect their families, a couple of grunts were lying on their own blood. I averted my eyes and entered my house, my home, for the first time since I left for Mars.
The door was completely blown of its hinges, the hall was damaged and some of the pictures had fallen to the floor, no doubt thanks to the large bodies of the brutes. I walked into the kitchen and looked at the living room. My uncle was there.
I would love to say that there was a mountain of bodies around him, and that he smiled at me while smoking one of his beloved cigars, with a weapon on his lap.
Instead, my uncle was leaning backwards on his favorite couch, six spiker rounds protruding from his chest. There was a weapon in the floor next to him, his favorite hunting shotgun, it was one of those monsters designed to hunt the megafauna on this planet, two barreled and ressembling the look of those ancient shotguns from the XIX century. The gun wasn't smoking, but there was an used up shotgun cartridge on the floor. I couldn't help but smile weakly at the dead brute in front of him, a large portion of it's face torn away. I looked behind me and I saw that the kitchen window and part of the wall around it were broken and riddled with holes respectively.
I stepped over the brute and sat on it, staring at my uncle's dead body, he had an expression of anger on his face, like daring the aliens to come at him. At least he had made them pay. I closed his eyes with my hands before I finally burst into tears.
I stayed there for a while, helmet off, just crying like a little kid, all my family was gone, everyone that had ever cared for me was dead. I considered killing myself right then and there, but immediately discarded the option. I simply stood up, not crying anymore and walked around the house. I went up to my room; it looked exactly the same as I had left it. There was dust covering most surfaces on the room. I smiled at the posters of girls in swimsuits or with convinietly placed scenery covering their bodies. There was a poster with every single infantry weapon that the UNSC had, it was old, most of the weapons already phased out in favour of newer ones.
I sat on my bed for a few minutes, glanced at the shelves filled with books. I sighed, I wasn't crying anymore, now I simply felt numb. I took a deep sigh, as if it was a big effort getting up, like the first school morning after summer vacation.
I got up, went downstairs and left my home before paying my respects to my uncle on last time.
I was walking down the street and towards the main area of the camp when I lost it.
"Fuck!" I cried out as I punched a wall. I kept cursing and punching the wall until at least two of my knuckles were broken. My hand was trembling and it hurt like hell, but somehow, I felt better.
"Whose there?" croaked a weak voice.
I raised my rifle in the direction of the voice, cursing as my broken knuckles didn't allow me to grab my weapon properly.
I turned the corner to one of the small buildings to find myself facing a man in ODST armor, he was slowly getting to his feet, one hand on the wall and one trying to lift his M247L. He looked like crap. At least his armor looked like crap, which meant that the person underneath all that metal was probably looking even worse.
He was missing one of his shoulder pauldrons and I could see that the round that had taken it of tore through his body suit and his skin, blood was oozing from the wound. His visor was cracked from top to bottom and there was a spiker round lodged into his chest protector. The rest of his armor was filled with scorch marks and the arm he was trying to use as support on the wall was hanging at a weird angle.
I ran to support him before he fell down to the ground again. I grabbed his wounded arm and realized it was twisted at the elbow. I decided it would probably do no harm to put it over my shoulder and I did so. The marine moaned as his arm slammed into my armor. With my other hand I helped sling his machine gun over his shoulder and tightened the straps, so that he could fire with one hand if he needed to.
"What's your name soldier?" I asked him.
"Private Pavel Klaus, 105th Marine Drop Jet Platoon," he answered, his voice sounding weak.
"Never heard of it," I returned, not giving either my name or unit, I don't think I was allowed to. "You the only one left?" I asked. He nodded weakly in response. I walked him to the infirmary of the camp, the door was opened, forcefully it seemed, and the doctors had been killed by plasma fire. I reached the room with the medicine cabinet and smashed it open, I grabbed a couple of painkillers and handed them to the weakened soldier. He took of his helmet to reveal blue eyes and blonde hair. He downed two painkillers before he decided to have another one.
"Easy now," I warned him.
Just as I was saying that I found what I was looking for.
"Ok now, don't move. This will hurt, probably a lot," he didn't have time to say anything before I jammed a large needle into his neck.
He screamed in pain as the adrenaline started flowing through his veins. He started shaking like crazy before finally settling down.
"Whoo!" he said as he shook his head. "That was awesome."
I liked this guy.
Once I had told him not to move his arm I called down a pelican. I still had contact with the Inconvenience and therefore with my unit.
"Where the hell have you been soldier?" said Zavala's voice in my helmet. "You were supposed to fall back to Position Yankee with the rest of your unit."
"I was left behind to mark the target sir," I said.
Gramps simply grumbled something before cutting the channel. Fifteen minutes later a pelican from my ship had been sent down, it was hovering right in the middle of the courtyard, a hundred meters away from the infirmary. I propped Pavel on my shoulders before he told me he could walk just fine. He was probably doing a lot of internal damage by doing that, but he wasn't feeling any of it. The pelican landed completely and a pilot peeked out of the troop bay, she was carrying a M6J carbine and was wearing a pilot's armor, with some slight modifications. She saw me and Pavel walking towards her and called out for us to hurry. I jumped into the pelican, which was designated as Mary's Little Lamb and helped Pavel up. The pilot either recognized me or her handiwork on my boot, because she smiled and looked at me.
"The correct term is weld," she teased.
"Oh shut up and get us out of here."
She looked at Pavel doubtfully. "I don't think I'm allowed to transport him," she said with a nervous tone to her voice.
"He's a lone survivor," I said, trying to convince her to let him on the ship.
"Well, he certainly fits the profile, and I'm not about to let him die here," she said as she jumped back into the cockpit.
"What was that all about?" Pavel asked.
"You'll find out soon enough," I said.
The pelican airlifted us out of my former home and towards Position Yankee. I couldn't help but feel a pang of nostalgia through all that pain. This would be the last time I would see my this place. I checked my rifle to confirm it was in working order as I gazed out of the cargo bay of the airship. I could see the crashed cruiser on the ground below us, it was a smoking and flaming wreck. Behind it there was a small trail of dirt where it had destroyed everything in its path. Further down from the crash site there was the city of Olimpia, once glorious and beautiful with its tall glass buildings. I could see the sea even farther out, it would soon be boiling out of the atmosphere.
The pelican landed in Position Yankee, which seemed to not only be the fallout point for our unit, but for the whole UNSC forces in the area. I could clearly see the difference between the UNSC Army and the Marines. There were pelicans appearing and disappearing in the distant sky, I even caught sight of two albatrosses evacuating mobile hospitals.
We had managed to fight the Covenant to a standstill down here, but it didn't seem like the swabbies up there managed to accomplish the same feat.
"We're retreating son," was what Colonel Zavala said when I asked him about the situation.
"Sir," I replied. "Do you know anything about what happened to the unit I was with?" I asked.
The colonel nodded grimly and told me. "They were caught by a force of banshees. They managed to take down most of them, at the cost of a large number of soldiers."
The colonel had specifically said a large number. I had only been with Alpha 2nd for a couple of months but I already figured that if our unit had suffered casualties that could be rated as "a large number" it was nothing but bad news.
I asked around the camp to see if anyone knew where my platoon was located. When I finally found my batallion I was dismayed to see that it was now only slightly larger than a company. My own unit was reduced to ten men, most of them were armorless and sporting bandages in certain parts of their bodies. Dom and Bear weren't amongst them.
I almost punched another wall right then and there, but the growing pain in my hand kept me from doing so. I gestured to Pavel, who had followed me since we left the pelican, to follow me. I led him to the med bay assigned to our ship's contingent. Despite the fact that we had been sent to aid regular soldiers in the defense of Jericho VII, I could tell that our batallion had been sent to do the particularly dangerous missions. The blood on the floor and the tired-looking doctors were a clear sign of that.
They weren't attending anyone now, there were bodies on the beds, which meant that they had probably done all they could so far.
"What can I do you for?" asked the doctor from my ship. He was looking tired and perhaps even depressed.
"I have broken knuckles and my buddy here is only standing up because he's on a drug cocktail," I explained. That last part was starting to show. Pavel was now staring at points in the air and trying to grab invisible butterflies.
"What's in his system?" he asked me as he reached for a large syringe and a jar of something.
"Adrenaline and painkillers," I answered.
He nodded, "You remember the brand?" he asked me.
I shook my head. The doctor shrugged as he put the needle in Pavel's neck. He unceremoniously dumped a corpse from its bed and placed Pavel on it right before he lost consciousness. He motioned for two other doctors to help him, they promptly began taking of the wounded soldier's armor, revealing bit by bit the extent of his injuries.
"Well, he's going to need a new liver, and throw in another right kidney and lung just to be sure," said one of the doctors, mostly to herself.
"Don't forget the skin grafts," said the other one.
Talk about black humor.
My doctor smiled. "It's the only way we can deal with so much death," he said sadly. "Now, what do you prefer, the quick or the painless cure?"
"Quick," I replied after a moment's hesitation.
The doctor nodded, as if he had been expecting that he checked which knuckles of my hand were broken (the outer two) and grabbed an apparatus that looked like a torture device. He placed two large needles into it and attatched a jar on top with a silvery fluid.
"Bite onto something son," he said as the remaining doctor grabbed my arm and prevented me from moving.
What did I get myself into? I asked myself as I bit into a bloodied pillow.
The doctor plunged the two needles into my knuckles; they went all the way through the skin and partially into the bone. My scream was muffled by the pillow, but only barely. When he pressed the trigger and the silvery stuff started disappearing into my hand the pain only intensified. I was banging a table with my other hand, I was careful to use the side of my hand, so that I didn't break any other knuckles.
A few seconds later the doctor was done. He pulled out the needles and handed me a couple of painkillers. I swallowed them down as fast as possible.
"The liquid will help heal your hands, try to move them around a bit, so that they don't heal your knuckles in one fixed position," he warned me.
I nodded, the pain already receding. The doctor was bandaging my hand now.
"You'll get a scar in your hands, you might need stitches later, but I don't think that's a pressing matter," he said as he finished the bandage, blood was already beginning to soak through.
"How did you do that to your hand anyway?" he asked me.
"I punched an elite," I lied.
"Right," he said. He obviously hadn't believed me, it was such an obvious lie, you don't often get to punch elites and make it out alive. I should've said I did it to a grunt or even a jackal, that would've been true enough.
"Anyways, thanks doc, mind if I ask your name?" I said as I prepared to leave.
"Yuri Zhivago," he said.
"Like the guy in the book?" I asked, surprised. My uncle had made me read that book when I was sixteen.
"You know, you're the first person to tell me that. My parents decided it would be funny to name me after a twentieth century character."
"Hell, you're even a doctor," I said, smiling. It was probably because of the painkillers.
The doctor didn't smile back, I don't know if it was because I had forced the joke or because he was simply to tired. I decided it was best to leave, which I did after thanking him again.
Six hours later I was on my way to another colony, Jericho VII being reduced to nothing but a molten sphere of glass behind me.