Fade to Black - Proof (17 page)

Jack was
oblivious to whatever activity might still be going on around him on the
sidewalk. Instead he leaned over cautiously and peered over the ragged edge of
the torn sidewalk into the black chasm. Deep in the blackness of the hole, he
thought he saw little pinpoints of light. Then he felt a hot, dirty wind rush
out of the hole and blow dust into his eyes, blinding him. As he fought the
tears in his eyes, trying desperately to focus into the darkness, he heard another
sound over the now howling wind. He strained to catch it again. He was uncertain
whether it was just the wind he heard, which grew now to a nearly animallike
shriek, or a haunting voice. Then he heard it again.

SAAAR’NN……..SAR’N
STILLLLLLMAAAAAANNNNNN!

What in the
fuck!?

Then the wind
mixed suddenly with blowing sand, which poured out of the hole like a giant
throat vomiting up dry desert. It lifted Jack into the air and he tried to
scream, but was choked by the sand which filled his lungs and eyes. His chest
burned and turned tight as he struggled to get air. A familiar burning pain
grew in the center of his throat and he tumbled upwards for a moment. Then he
felt strong hands on his arms and legs, a pair of arms wrapped around his chest.
The blowing sand reversed and he was pulled with the cyclone of an Iraqi desert
down into the black pit in the sidewalk.

The last thing
he heard was a coarse rattling laugh and a voice.

You belong
with us Sar’n.

Then his mind
went as black as the void into which he fell. 

Chapter

20

Jack was unable to move, blind
and paralyzed, and realized he was going to suffocate, buried under a pile of
sand. His mouth was full of the foul dust, and he was unable to open his eyes.
His chest bucked, his body trying desperately to find a swallow of air to pull
into his lungs. He felt himself slipping again from consciousness.

Just as his
mind faded, he felt strong hands grab at his shirt and arms and lift him slowly
and heavily, pulling him from the sandy tomb. He felt more hands brush roughly
across his face and eyes, and another set of fingers probed his mouth, scooping
out handfuls of wet dust. He coughed violently and the cough caused a wracking
pain through his whole body.

“We got him,
Commander,” a familiar voice said. Jack’s body continued to convulse with
uncontrollable coughing, intermixed with harsh wheezes as his lungs sucked in
desperately needed air. His mind began to clear.

“Set him
against the berm,” another voice said. Jack recognized it immediately.

Hoag.

He felt a
little strength begin to flow into his arms and legs and pushed angrily at the
hands on his face. He wiped at his eyes with the backs of his own hands instead
and felt the burning pain in his chest subside. His gasps slowed and he felt
finally like he might live.

He opened his
eyes and blinked away the tears and remaining sand that clouded his vision.
There were four silhouettes in a loose circle around him, but his vision was
still too cloudy to make them out. It didn’t matter. He knew who they were.
Jack felt a new and growing panic inside his mind. He was not, in any way, in
fucking control of any of this. This was much bigger than his mind. Lewellyn
was dead wrong. The names in the paper were sure to match the battered figures
he would see when his vision cleared.

“Should I give
him something to drink?” Simmons' voice asked. It was mushy and wet, like he
remembered it being from his yard.

“Where are you
gonna git him somethin’, dick-cheese?” Kindrich’s slow Tennessee drawl asked.

“Just give him
some air and a minute,” Hoag’s voice commanded.

“Roger that, sir,”
Simmons said. Then he added, “He looks kinda funny with all of that long hair
and shit.”

“Yeah,” Bennet
said, “he done gone all civilian on us.”

Jack blinked a
few more times and his vision cleared somewhat. The figures were still clouded
in darkness, but they were sharper now. He found that he was leaned against a
sand berm, his legs stretched out in the dirt. Jack saw that he still wore his
jeans and tennis shoes, which calmed him for some reason. He gave one last
heroic cough and spit a mouth full of sand into the dirt beside him. Then he
raised his head and stared at Hoag, venom in his gaze.

“What in the
fuck is going on?” he demanded.

The chaplain
sat next to him and patted his shoulder. His eyes were soft behind the round
glasses, but his look did nothing to calm Jack’s rage. The look incited him
more, if anything.

“Sorry,
Sar’n.” Hoag said with sincerity. “I know that was a lousy way to get your
attention.” He took off his glasses and again started his irritating ritual of
cleaning them on the corner of his digital cammie blouse. Jack resisted the
overwhelming urge to smack the shit out of his cherubic face. “I’m afraid we’re
running out of time, Casey,” he said.

“Time for
what?” Jack demanded, and rose to his feet. The small circle of Marines behind
him backed up a step. Jack resisted the urge to look at them. He knew what he
would see. Simmons with his bloody half face and toothless skeleton grin.
Kindrich with a quarter‐sized hole over his right eye and the back of his head
completely gone, yawning open over a bloody grey mush of brain and bone. And
Bennet. He last saw Bennet take a round in the face behind the wall in
Fallujah, but he had a fair idea what that would look like. To look would be to
give up more control, which he had precious little of at the moment.

At least his
anger covered up his horror and fear.

“Casey, you
need to come back.” Hoag said simply. “We are almost out of time and you need
to come back.” Jack felt a hand on his shoulder from his men behind him, but
shook it off without turning.

“This is
bullshit! This is all a nightmare! I created all of you,” he screamed.

“How do you
explain this?” Hoag asked. Jack saw that he was holding out his newspaper to
him.

“This is
bullshit, too!” Jack said. “And why do you all give a fuck about me dying in
Fallujah anyway? Why is it any of your fucking business?” Now Jack did turn to
look at his men. “Just leave me alone. I am with my family now, so leave me the
fuck alone!”

“You belong
with us, Sar’n,” Simmons said simply. In the pale moonlight Jack saw dark blood
on the boy’s chin again, which Simmons wiped away with the back of his hand as
if embarrassed. “We’re all in this together.” There was a childlike innocence
in the voice and Jack felt himself drawn to the kid in a paternal way. Simmons.
The boy whom he had held, forehead to forehead, when the shit hit the fan in
Fallujah. Just a child.

Bennet stared
off over the berm now. He put a cigarette to his mouth and took a raspy drag.
With revulsion Jack saw that smoke dribbled out from a myriad of little
puncture wounds in the side of his neck. Jack turned away, his stomach
churning. He looked again at Hoag who watched him impassively, his glasses now
back in place on his round face.

“And who the
hell are you in all of this anyway?” Jack demanded. “These guys, I know.
They’re…” he stopped. They’re what? “Well, in my nightmare anyway, they’re my
friends, part of my team. But just who in the fuck are you, Commander?”

Hoag looked
down with what Jack sensed was a real sadness. He smoothed out the wrinkled
paper in his hands and handed it over. Jack took it, his face wrinkled in
confusion. What was he supposed to look at? He saw the page was again opened to
“The Human Toll.” He had seen this, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t want to look
again at the names of his friends.

“What?” he
asked.

“Third name
from the top. Second column.”

Jack looked
down, straining in the poor light to see the words on the page. He found the
second column of names and counted down to the third one.

Emmett
G. Hoag, 41, USN

Ramadi,
Iraq

Jack looked up
again at the Navy chaplain, whose face was twisted in anguish. He looked older
now. The commander reached both hands to the bottom of his cammie blouse and
pulled up the front of the shirt and the green T-shirt underneath. Jack stared
in horror at the giant gaping hole in the left side of his chest, which
continued across and turned downward over the slightly pudgy belly. Through the
large hole in the chest Jack saw the gnarled, fingertips of torn ribs, bits of
bloody meat hanging from them. In the center was a grey pool of mush that had
once been a lung. From the bottom of the gaping gash in his abdomen, a few feet
of intestines protruded and hung like links of sausage over the waistband of
his pants.

Hoag pulled
his shirt down just as Jack tore his eyes from the horrible sight. Too late to
prevent the image from being burned permanently into his mind, he was sure.

“I was on a
convoy heading back to Baghdad from Ramadi when we hit an IED,” Hoag said,
referring to a roadside improvised explosive device that the insurgents made
from electronic equipment, like cell phones and radios, linked to unexploded
rockets or bombs. “Four other Marines were wounded, but I was the only one
killed.” He looked at Jack with sad but even eyes. “It happened the same day
that you guys were hit in Fallujah. The same day you were all killed.”

The words
stung at Jack’s overloaded mind, taking away his breath. “No…” he whispered
softly. Oh, God, no! No, this was bullshit! This was a nightmare! This was some
madness his mind chose to torture him with for reasons that still were far from
clear. Suddenly being crazy didn’t seem like such a horrible thing. Anything
was better than this. What about Pam, his true love and whole life? What about
Claire, their beautiful little girl? If he was crazy he could still see them
(at least on visiting days), but not if he was dead. No, this was total FUCKING
BULLSHIT! Jack felt himself sway, or more accurately, he felt like he was still
and the whole world swayed around him. He was barely aware of Hoag’s hand on
his shoulder.

“Now, I don’t
understand it either, Sar’n. Nothing in my education or training in the clergy
helps me understand any of this. But I know one thing.” His hand gripped Jack’s
shoulder tighter, hurting him. He seemed not angry, but desperate. “None of us
can go until we all go together.”

“Go where?”
Jack heard his own voice, far away, ask.

“Away from here.
I don’t know where we go next, Casey. But we are stuck here until we all go
together. And,” there was panic in his voice now, “we are running out of time!”

Jack’s mind swam
in circles. “But…but, I wasn’t killed.” He pleaded. “I was wounded. I was hurt
bad, but I wasn’t killed.”

“Yes, you
were.” Hoag said.  His voice sounded hysterical. “Yes, you were! We all were!”
Jack saw a growing red stain on the front of the chaplain’s uniform, and Hoag
reached unconsciously to his belly with his free hand, holding his guts in
while he yelled. “Goddamnit, Casey, we are running out of time!” He let go of
his belly and shook him by both shoulders now, but Jack barely felt it.

“My name is Jack,”
Jack said in a soft and childlike voice.

“WHAT?” Hoag
was now totally ape-shit, hollering and shaking him. Jack grabbed him by the
wrists.

“My name is
Jack.” He said again, louder and evenly, with more confidence.

“NO, IT IS
NOT!!” Hoag screamed. Jack heard a tearing sound and saw a loop of bowel slip
out from under Hoag’s shirt. The commander screamed again, and shoved Jack
backwards. Jack fell, but instead of crunching to the ground on his back, he
continued to fall, disappeared into the sand, and was swallowed up again by the
blackness.

Chapter

21

He looked up into the sky from
his position on his back. The purple hue of sunset was gone now and he saw only
black night and pinpoint stars. It was incredible how many stars he could see
out here in the desert, without the lights of civilization stealing away some
of the darkness. Casey remembered his time aboard the LHD amphibious assault
ship his unit had been assigned to—the “Gator” as the Navy sailors who crewed
her called it—bobbing out in the dark night of the Indian Ocean, just a couple
of years ago. He had seen stars like this then and remembered the feeling of
standing up in the catwalk, the ship running with its lights out in total
darkness. He had felt like he was floating in space, surrounded by only
blackness and those stars. This sky was much like that.

His sense of
serenity was stolen from him as a red tracer from a burst of 7.62‐millimeter
gunfire, likely from a Humvee‐mounted machine gun, streaked over his head,
accompanied by the familiar bop…bop…bop. He became aware of movement and voices
around him again and tried to concentrate on the sounds—to make out words to
help orient himself. He felt pain as a hand touched his tensely swollen neck.

“It’s getting
worse. It’s getting bigger,” a voice said. “We have to get him the hell out of
here.” He thought it sounded like Barton’s voice.

“Look, Doc,” a
disturbingly familiar voice said, “I would like to get him on the bird as much
as you, but we just can’t yet. We have to get control of this street, or
they’ll just shoot the bird out of the fucking sky.” There was a burst of
gunfire, very close this time. “Do what ya’ can, Doc. Maybe I can get you out
of here in the next fifteen minutes, okay?”

“We’re running
out of time,” the Battalion Surgeon’s voice said. “He’s bleeding to death from
his neck, and I think he’s bleeding into his chest, as well. We’re going to
lose him if we don’t hurry.” There was a sound in the voice that Casey
definitely recognized.

Fear.

“Do what ya’
can,” the familiar voice he couldn’t place said again. Then there was a
rustling of activity as the owner of the voice moved away. “Get me mortars off the
LAVs on that row of windows—that row right there. We need to end this shit.” The
voice faded away.

“Morphine?”
HM2 White’s voice, this short but wiry little corpsman from New Orleans, asked.
Everyone called him Shorty or Mini-Me.

“Can’t,”
Barton’s voice said. “His blood pressure is getting too low. I think, though,”
more rustling as he stared again up at the night sky, “that we need to put in a
chest tube on the right side. I think he’s filling up with blood. I can’t hear
much air moving on that side.”

“Okay,” Shorty
said, and Casey again heard activity. “I’ll hang two more liters of fluid. Wish
we had some fuckin’ blood to give him.”

“Yeah,” Barton
agreed. “Wish we had a fucking OR to give him. Prep his chest.”

He felt a
sudden burst of cold on the right side of his chest, then rough scrubbing. He
was pretty numb now; he was aware of pain, but didn’t really feel it. He tried
to think about something else. He felt dizzy, or maybe swimmy was a better
word. It was like he was floating in a warm pool. His eyes focused again on the
field of stars above him. He was becoming increasingly aware that it was very
difficult to get air into his lungs. Each breath brought with it the raspy,
whistling noise, followed by a gurgling that he felt more than heard. He
thought the gurgling might be from inside of him.

There was a
sudden stab of pain in his chest and a burning, but again he was only vaguely
aware of it. He thought of Pam and Claire. He wondered what they were doing.
With all his might he concentrated on seeing their faces in his mind, closing
his eyes to help picture them more clearly.

He felt
pressure more than a pain now, deep in the right side of his chest, like
someone was standing on his rib cage.

“Let me have a
hemostat,” Barton’s voice said. “I’m nearly there. Just gotta pop in.”

There was a
fleeting pain, then more pressure, and he felt a sudden rush of wet warmth on
his right side and arm.

“Holy fuck,
that’s a lot of blood.” Shorty’s voice now.

“Easy. Just
give me the tube.”

He felt
another burning, this time extending all the way up into the right side of his
neck. He realized that it was a lot easier to breathe, however, and his mind
cleared just a little.

“Jesus, Doc,”
Shorty said from the darkness. “Did you expect all that friggin’ blood?”

“Just give me
a stitch and get a bunch of tape ready,” Barton said sharply.

It was definitely
easier to breathe. He let his mind drift back to the game of picturing his
family, and could see them quite clearly now, Pam and Claire, sitting in the
front yard. They waved to him, as if in one of those old home movies without
sound. He tried to raise his arm to wave back, but couldn’t. He smiled anyway.

The picture
flashed suddenly to a new image. Pam looking up at him from their bed, her hair
on a pillow, sheet pulled up to her bare shoulders. Her lips were moving. She
was trying to tell him something. He strained to listen.

“Come home, baby,”
Pam’s voice said. It was muffled and far away. “Please come back, Casey. Please
don’t leave me…”

“Daddy,
Daddy…” Claire’s voice sounded muted and tinny.

He had to get
home. He couldn’t leave them. He couldn’t leave his life with them, not now,
not yet.

“Please,” he
tried to say. But there was no sound except the wheezing gurgle and now a new,
bubbling sound. But he felt his lips moving.

We are almost
out of time. We have to all go together.

Hoag’s voice.

Please Sar’n.
You belong here with us.

 
Simmons’
young, pleading voice.

No. No, fuck
all of you. This isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I want to go
home to my family.

He
concentrated with all his might, his eyes closed tightly, tears hot and wet on
his face.

I’m coming,
Pam.

The night sky
lightened, not abruptly, but gently, and was replaced little by little with a
swirled stucco ceiling and a slowly turning fan. As he watched in fascination,
wide‐eyed, the dusty night sky was replaced by the familiar ceiling of his
bedroom. As it changed, the sounds, the gunfire and rockets, the shouting
voices, faded away. Like someone slowly turned down the volume on a television
show, until finally it was gone, and he heard only the barely audible creak,
creak of the ceiling fan.

He smiled. Pam
had been asking him to balance that damn fan for weeks.

He felt
himself change also. The burning pain in his chest and throat dissipated and
then disappeared, and the raspy gurgling of his breathing was replaced with a
soft and comfortable sighing of near sleep. He felt Pam stir beside him.

Jack’s wife
lay in their bed, the sheet pulled up to her bare shoulders, her hair spread
out on the pillow beneath her. Jack rolled over stiffly and put his arm around
his sleeping wife. He breathed deeply of her scent and hugged her gently. She
squeezed his arm and sighed, then rolled over to face him, her eyes opening and
a smile spreading across her sleepy, angelic face.

“Hey, you,” she
said.

Jack kissed
her forehead gently.

“Hey, baby,”
he said.

Pam reached
her hand up from under the sheets and caressed his face with her warm hand.

“You okay, honey?”
she asked, “You look like you’ve been crying.” Pam ran a finger lightly over
his cheek then kissed her fingertip gently. “Jack, you’ve been crying. What’s
wrong?”

“Nothing, baby,”
he said and pulled her against him. Pam sighed and hugged him back.

“Nightmare?” she
asked.

“No,” he said.
He closed his eyes and held her tightly. He was home. “I just love you so much,
Pam.” He pulled his head back from their embrace and looked her deeply in the
eyes. “Do you know that, baby?”

Pam closed her
eyes and smiled, then kissed him lightly on his lips.

“I know,” she
said. “I love you too, Casey. I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m home,”
Jack said.

“Yes, baby,”
Pam said, hugging him tighter. “You’re home.”

Jack held her
like that, feeling her breathing slow and her arms relax as she drifted off to
sleep. He felt like there were so many questions he should be asking himself.
So many things he needed to sort out. But he was so tired—so goddamn exhausted.
He let himself slip softly and comfortably into a deep and dreamless sleep, his
arms wrapped around his wife.

*   *   *

Jack woke
feeling relaxed and content at first. The room was warm from the morning sun,
and he kicked the sheet and blanket off of his legs. He stretched out his arms
and back, feeling stiff, then reached for his wife, but she was gone. Her side
of the bed was still warm though. Jack yawned.

Then he sat
up, his mind suddenly racing. His initial thoughts were not about Fallujah, or
Hoag, or falling through a black hole in the sidewalk downtown in the middle of
the day. Instead, he tried desperately to remember how in the hell he got home.
He remembered every detail of his afternoon, of his trip (nightmare?) to Iraq, and
his conversation with Hoag. He remembered lying in the street of Fallujah again,
as Casey Stillman. What he couldn’t remember was anything after that. How had
he ended up in their bed? His next memory was of lying in bed with Pam late
last night. Where was the rest of the time? Where had he awoken from his
nightmare? It had to have been downtown, so how did he get home and what
happened after that?

The memories
of his nightmare terrified him, but not half as much as the huge gap in his
memory. He had no idea what had happened in the seventeen or eighteen hours
since the horrible hallucination downtown. He also realized that he no longer
believed that his trips to Fallujah or his conversations with Hoag and the
others were really hallucinations. Not anymore.

Jack looked
over at the clock on his nightstand. Eight thirty—still early.

He needed to
talk to Pam.

Jack pulled on
some sweat pants and a T-shirt and padded barefoot out of the room. Before
heading down the stairs he gave into the urge to look at Claire in her crib,
maybe give her a kiss. He headed down the hall and peered in, but her crib was
empty.

Huh. Must be
up already.

Jack realized
it would be a lot more comfortable to talk to his wife about the missing time
if Claire were still in bed. He wasn’t sure why that was, she was only a
toddler and certainly didn’t understand enough to realize Dad was crazy as a
shithouse wall. It didn’t matter. He needed desperately to talk to his wife.
Jack turned and headed downstairs.

“There’s
Daddy!” Pam said to the smiling little girl in her lap as Jack came down the
stairs and into the living room. She sat cross‐legged on the floor, her arms
around their little girl as they worked together on an Elmo puzzle. “Good
morning, sunshine,” she said and reached out a hand to him. Jack took her hand
and then Pam turned to Claire. “Daddy can help us, Claire Bear.”

Jack smiled a
pensive smile and squeezed her hand. He saw her face cloud a bit.

“What’s wrong,
Jack? Did you have a nightmare?” Her voice sounded anxious.

Jack thought a
moment, unsure how to start. He looked down and picked up a puzzle piece, part
of Elmo’s arm holding a rubber ducky, and turned it over in his hands.

“Honey, what
happened last night?” he asked.

“What do you
mean, Jack? After we went to bed?”

Jack swallowed
hard. Might as well jump right in.

“No,” he said.
“Before…I…”

I what? I
don’t remember a single goddamn thing after I got to my car? Except for the
desert in Iraq, of course, and a street in Fallujah. My reality now.

He sighed
heavily. “I had kind of a blackout, Pam,” he looked up and held her troubled
gaze.

“A blackout? Jack,
what do you mean?”

Claire was
looking at them with a pout on her face now, not at all happy about the change
in mood.

 He blurted it
out.

“Pam, I don’t
remember driving home after lunch. In fact I don’t remember anything until you
woke up and looked at me last night.” There he had said it. No going back.

“Oh my God,
Jack,” Pam said. She covered her mouth with her free hand. “What do you
remember?”

Jack thought about
telling her about Hoag and the others in Iraq. He would, he decided, but first
he needed desperately to fill the gaps in his night.

“Honey, first
can you tell me what we did last night?” His voice was pleading and his eyes
were wet.