Read Online A Living Grave by Robert E. Dunn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert E. Dunn
Ads: Link
T-shirt was there. More brown. I found my panties down by my feet, but someoneâthe lieutenant, I assumedâhad ejaculated in them. I wouldnât put those on for anything. I could reach my pants, but only found one boot. It didnât matter; I had to get moving.
The clothes went on slowly. When I pulled the shirt over my head I almost screamed. Fresh blood streaked the cotton.
More color stolen.
It took another five minutes to get pants on.
When I stood, my head lurched again and the guts followed. There was no fighting it. I draped my body over the low wall and puked in hard spasms. Gold starbursts patterned my vision. I smelled bile and copper.
I didnât remember rising again. Nor did I remember walking from the wall. There is a gap in time and place that left me staggering toward a road, but away from the village in the distance. If I was anywhere near where I thought I was, there would be a traffic checkpoint in about three kilometers. It could just as well have been a million. Before I made it a hundred yards down the road, a white dot appeared on the horizon. A vehicle.
If it wasnât green it wasnât safe.
There was a depression in the dirt alongside the road that was almost deep enough to pass for a ditch. It was mostly bare dirt but here and there were bits of trash. No cover.
No choice. I dropped into the dirt. When I hit, something popped in my chest. It was physical and audible and started a cascade of wrenching pain. A doctor told me later a nick in my lung must have torn through. Air was escaping into the chest cavity at the same time that blood was running into the lung. Each breath was a loud, gasping rattle that brought in little air and almost as much dust.
The white pickup truck slowed on shrieking brakes, and then wheeled around after passing. They had seen me. I had seen them. It was a small truck, but it carried three men up front and six in the back. All were armed.
Even over the old engine and bad brakes, even over my own ragged breathing, I could hear the excited shouts of the men.
Summerâs over.
I said good-bye, in quiet thoughts, to my mother and father. All thoughts had become prayers. Everyone who had ever done me harm, I forgave, except the men who had put me where I was. Then I waited for the real death.
One man jumped down from the truck bed and the others stayed behind, shouting. I couldnât tell if the shouts were instruction or encouragement. The bolt on an AK-47 was pulled. All the shouting stopped.
Iâm not ready.
The shouting started up again, but it was different in tone and urgency. The man with the AK ran back to the truck. He sprayed a wash of rounds at me without aiming as the truck left the road and took off across open ground.
A moment later, I watched as a column of Humvees stopped short of my position. A squad of men piled out and formed a perimeter. A sergeant I had never seen before stalked up to me with his weapon at the ready. He looked close and long before calling back, âWe need a medic and a litter up here.â
* * *
I rose early in the damp chill of sunrise on the lake. Every breath captured the full life smell of watery fecundity and the slow decay of deadwood. Carried across the width of deep liquid green was the sound of a woodpecker hammering his way into the carcass of a standing, dead cedar. I noticed all of it, but appreciated nothing as I skulked from the houseboat to my truck. The beauty of the world around me felt like something to hide from after a night spent reliving what I had come to think of as my first death. Closing the truck door shut it all out. It failed to shut out the shame I felt. It might have helped if I hadnât carried the jar of whiskey with me.
At home I cleaned up and caffeinated. I did it all like someone trying to ignore a camera in their bedroom. I kept all my thoughts behind a veil of normalcy. Then I caught myself looking out from the mirror. So much of me was gone from
The clothes went on slowly. When I pulled the shirt over my head I almost screamed. Fresh blood streaked the cotton.
More color stolen.
It took another five minutes to get pants on.
When I stood, my head lurched again and the guts followed. There was no fighting it. I draped my body over the low wall and puked in hard spasms. Gold starbursts patterned my vision. I smelled bile and copper.
I didnât remember rising again. Nor did I remember walking from the wall. There is a gap in time and place that left me staggering toward a road, but away from the village in the distance. If I was anywhere near where I thought I was, there would be a traffic checkpoint in about three kilometers. It could just as well have been a million. Before I made it a hundred yards down the road, a white dot appeared on the horizon. A vehicle.
If it wasnât green it wasnât safe.
There was a depression in the dirt alongside the road that was almost deep enough to pass for a ditch. It was mostly bare dirt but here and there were bits of trash. No cover.
No choice. I dropped into the dirt. When I hit, something popped in my chest. It was physical and audible and started a cascade of wrenching pain. A doctor told me later a nick in my lung must have torn through. Air was escaping into the chest cavity at the same time that blood was running into the lung. Each breath was a loud, gasping rattle that brought in little air and almost as much dust.
The white pickup truck slowed on shrieking brakes, and then wheeled around after passing. They had seen me. I had seen them. It was a small truck, but it carried three men up front and six in the back. All were armed.
Even over the old engine and bad brakes, even over my own ragged breathing, I could hear the excited shouts of the men.
Summerâs over.
I said good-bye, in quiet thoughts, to my mother and father. All thoughts had become prayers. Everyone who had ever done me harm, I forgave, except the men who had put me where I was. Then I waited for the real death.
One man jumped down from the truck bed and the others stayed behind, shouting. I couldnât tell if the shouts were instruction or encouragement. The bolt on an AK-47 was pulled. All the shouting stopped.
Iâm not ready.
The shouting started up again, but it was different in tone and urgency. The man with the AK ran back to the truck. He sprayed a wash of rounds at me without aiming as the truck left the road and took off across open ground.
A moment later, I watched as a column of Humvees stopped short of my position. A squad of men piled out and formed a perimeter. A sergeant I had never seen before stalked up to me with his weapon at the ready. He looked close and long before calling back, âWe need a medic and a litter up here.â
* * *
I rose early in the damp chill of sunrise on the lake. Every breath captured the full life smell of watery fecundity and the slow decay of deadwood. Carried across the width of deep liquid green was the sound of a woodpecker hammering his way into the carcass of a standing, dead cedar. I noticed all of it, but appreciated nothing as I skulked from the houseboat to my truck. The beauty of the world around me felt like something to hide from after a night spent reliving what I had come to think of as my first death. Closing the truck door shut it all out. It failed to shut out the shame I felt. It might have helped if I hadnât carried the jar of whiskey with me.
At home I cleaned up and caffeinated. I did it all like someone trying to ignore a camera in their bedroom. I kept all my thoughts behind a veil of normalcy. Then I caught myself looking out from the mirror. So much of me was gone from
Similar Books
