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Authors: Theo Black Gangi
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him to a supply drop. It was not a coincidence that the chute fell so close to his location. The supplies were his way home.
Climbing escarpments, shoulder on fire, woozy and barren from loss of blood and loss of opium, he spotted a small group of tribesmen maybe four hundred yards around on the other side of the mountain.
Below the mountain men he spotted a mule. As he peered closer, there were three mules loaded with satchels on what passed for a pass up there. He paused mid-climb.
Let them beat me to the box
, he thought.
I’ll have a surprise waiting for their asses
.
Nos found a way down to the mules and stayed out of their sight, creeping beneath the path. He lay flat on his stomach. He aimed his sights just under the bellies of the mules. The surveillance was somehow easier than waiting in his fort for his opium to run out. Surveillance he was used to, being strung out he was not.
The Afghani’s feet came swiftly down the mountainside. They carried Russian AK 47’s and looked about with vigilance.
One of them went to open a satchel on the other side of a mule. Nos fired a round through the mule’s belly that burst out its back and plugged the tribesman. The man stared at his mule. The mule rocked and stumbled. The others fired almost instantly, but had no idea where the shot had come from. Nos gunned them down and they dropped, one by one.
When all was quiet he jumped up to the path. He went and kicked the guns away from the hands of the corpses. They did not appear to be Taliban. Their hair and beards were longer, their clothes older, boasting no colors. Just four tribesmen armed with AK 47’s taking their mules for a stroll.
The first man he shot was holding the bag from the supply drop: a cell phone, a 55-90 radio, and several MRE’s. Tubes that read absurd names like Chicken Fajita, Beef Brisket, and Meatballs Marinara Sauce.
When Nos checked the satchels he knew what four tribesmen were doing walking their mules in the night armed with stolen Russian artillery. They were trafficking goat’s milk. And opium.
Nos couldn’t help his grin.
He snuffed the opium tobacco in his lip and the wave hit the back of his knees and washed up his spinal chord and splashed in the base of his neck.
He took it all. The opium, the goat’s milk, the radio, the MRE’s, the cell phone, and made off, high as the very mountaintop. He found a fort, great cover, a stream close by, where he could light the beacon for his rescue. He was invisible on the great hillside. He would make the call.
They would find his position. Navy or Marines or whoever was closest would chute in. He would make the call. He would be back at base, and everyone would visit and show him love. They would give him metals and send him home for as long as he wanted. Home.
Him
. Not Steve from St. Joe’s, him. It was a simple choice:
Home
, or
the End of the World
.
When he went to make the call, when his thumbs grazed the keys of the cell phone, he began to shake.
Immense
anxiety overtook him. The phone flew from his hand. He would realize later he was still in shock and had been in shock the whole time. His cells had, however slightly, reconfigured to the requirement of the opium. He couldn’t breathe, no matter how hard he sucked at the air. He choked and felt his face go purple. Tears were flooding. The convulsions erupted inside him like mortar fire, one after the other, and just when he thought they had passed, that the bombing had stopped, there were more explosions, successive, endless.
He took another dose of the dreamy green stuff, and after a while, he was calm. His pulse was still way up, but he felt under control. He bent and picked up the phone where it had fallen, and his heart raced again. Could not breathe.
Home
.
Or the End of the World
.
Petty Officer Nos Greene put the phone down.
Chapter 20
Junk-Sick
Nos is overcome with feverous visions—Naomi the creature, wild and feral child of the new dawn, now a fanged wolf cub
Climbing escarpments, shoulder on fire, woozy and barren from loss of blood and loss of opium, he spotted a small group of tribesmen maybe four hundred yards around on the other side of the mountain.
Below the mountain men he spotted a mule. As he peered closer, there were three mules loaded with satchels on what passed for a pass up there. He paused mid-climb.
Let them beat me to the box
, he thought.
I’ll have a surprise waiting for their asses
.
Nos found a way down to the mules and stayed out of their sight, creeping beneath the path. He lay flat on his stomach. He aimed his sights just under the bellies of the mules. The surveillance was somehow easier than waiting in his fort for his opium to run out. Surveillance he was used to, being strung out he was not.
The Afghani’s feet came swiftly down the mountainside. They carried Russian AK 47’s and looked about with vigilance.
One of them went to open a satchel on the other side of a mule. Nos fired a round through the mule’s belly that burst out its back and plugged the tribesman. The man stared at his mule. The mule rocked and stumbled. The others fired almost instantly, but had no idea where the shot had come from. Nos gunned them down and they dropped, one by one.
When all was quiet he jumped up to the path. He went and kicked the guns away from the hands of the corpses. They did not appear to be Taliban. Their hair and beards were longer, their clothes older, boasting no colors. Just four tribesmen armed with AK 47’s taking their mules for a stroll.
The first man he shot was holding the bag from the supply drop: a cell phone, a 55-90 radio, and several MRE’s. Tubes that read absurd names like Chicken Fajita, Beef Brisket, and Meatballs Marinara Sauce.
When Nos checked the satchels he knew what four tribesmen were doing walking their mules in the night armed with stolen Russian artillery. They were trafficking goat’s milk. And opium.
Nos couldn’t help his grin.
He snuffed the opium tobacco in his lip and the wave hit the back of his knees and washed up his spinal chord and splashed in the base of his neck.
He took it all. The opium, the goat’s milk, the radio, the MRE’s, the cell phone, and made off, high as the very mountaintop. He found a fort, great cover, a stream close by, where he could light the beacon for his rescue. He was invisible on the great hillside. He would make the call.
They would find his position. Navy or Marines or whoever was closest would chute in. He would make the call. He would be back at base, and everyone would visit and show him love. They would give him metals and send him home for as long as he wanted. Home.
Him
. Not Steve from St. Joe’s, him. It was a simple choice:
Home
, or
the End of the World
.
When he went to make the call, when his thumbs grazed the keys of the cell phone, he began to shake.
Immense
anxiety overtook him. The phone flew from his hand. He would realize later he was still in shock and had been in shock the whole time. His cells had, however slightly, reconfigured to the requirement of the opium. He couldn’t breathe, no matter how hard he sucked at the air. He choked and felt his face go purple. Tears were flooding. The convulsions erupted inside him like mortar fire, one after the other, and just when he thought they had passed, that the bombing had stopped, there were more explosions, successive, endless.
He took another dose of the dreamy green stuff, and after a while, he was calm. His pulse was still way up, but he felt under control. He bent and picked up the phone where it had fallen, and his heart raced again. Could not breathe.
Home
.
Or the End of the World
.
Petty Officer Nos Greene put the phone down.
Chapter 20
Junk-Sick
Nos is overcome with feverous visions—Naomi the creature, wild and feral child of the new dawn, now a fanged wolf cub
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