“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.” Which was both impressive and embarrassing to him.
He wasn’t from Kansas, but right now Kansas would probably feel as much as home as anything. He was surrounded by green. Lush, vibrant, all-encompassing green. Vegetation the likes and amounts of which he had never seen before. Now, in and of itself this was fine, really. The problem was, a moment ago it had all been a desert.
There were other things missing. Some houses, to start with. A train of Humvees and a squad of soldiers too. And of course the insurgents, the explosions, the gunfire, the shouting and screaming.
Maybe he was still on edge because he had just been in the middle of a firefight, or maybe he was on edge because he was no longer in that firefight and he didn’t know why, but when he heard someone move behind him, he instantly turned and raised his rifle.
“Colburn, dude… Trent. You alright, man?”
The man walking towards him was his Team Leader. He looked pretty beat up, but otherwise fine. He was removing his helmet as he approached, revealing his blonde hair, which was wet with sweat and strands of which were clinging to his forehead. Trent lowered his rifle again.
“What happened?”
“Dunno, man,” the Team Leader replied. He was looking at his helmet. It was black on one side, as was his face. Explosion. “Last thing I remember was Buck screaming ‘get down’.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Trent looked around again. The green was still there. No sign of any sand. The grass they were standing in was almost waist-high. Trent ran his hand through it, half expecting it to simply pass through the blades of grass, like in a dream. He was probably still knocked out cold from that explosion. Or dead.
Suddenly they heard cries of help. The voice sounded familiar. They couldn’t see anyone, the grass was so high, but they headed towards where the voice was coming from.
“Buck? Buckley?” the Team Leader shouted.
“Over here!” a hand was reaching up through the grass, waving back and forth. It was right by them – if he hadn’t made any sound, they’d probably have walked right past. Trent and his leader headed for it.
----
”Aw, shit.”
He was looking down at Buckley, who was on his knees in the tall grass. There was an unconscious figure lying before him, bleeding from the gut. Sergeant Sean Roth didn’t want to realize it at first, but the injured figure was Sergeant Major Richard Jameson. “Sarge”.
His vest had been removed, and Buckley’s hands were all bloody from trying to stop the bleeding. His first aid kit lay scattered around them. Roth took a moment to think. He wasn’t entirely sure what to think of, though. His situation was inexplicable, utterly alien, and completely surreal. He felt like how you feel when you’re searching for your sunglasses, and you look absolutely everywhere: under pillows, in the pockets of all your jackets, the bathroom, underneath the furniture, and you even start considering checking inside the fridge, except actually doing so would pretty much prove you’re crazy, so you convince yourself not to.
And you start to think you’re never going to see those sunglasses ever again, you probably lost them outside somewhere, or the dog buried them in the garden, and it’s such a shame, because those were really cool sunglasses. And then you pass the mirror in the hallway, and realise you’re wearing them. That feeling before the relief sets in, before you think to yourself how stupid you are – that split second of confusion, as your perception of reality is questioned – “Is that my sunglasses on my head?” He felt like that. Except a thousand times stronger.
Luckily he was snapped out of it by someone coming towards them, because a man was dying at his feet, and something had to happen. The man jogging towards them was Specialist Charlie Gunn. He must’ve just gotten up from out of the grass, because they hadn’t seen him when looking for Buckley.
“Guys, what the hell?” was his first remark.
The others couldn’t respond with much other than a confirming look – that was exactly what they were thinking. Then Charlie noticed Sarge lying on the ground, and Buckley frantically working to stop the bleeding. He was opening his canteen to pour some water on the wound to clean it up.
“Easy on the water,” said Team Leader Roth, “we don’t know where we are, we may have to conserve it.”
Buckley would have protested – he was trying to save a life – but he couldn’t. They were in a jungle, but they really, really shouldn’t be. And it was a sensible thing to do. Instead he simply nodded before continuing what he was doing, trying to use as little water as possible.
Trent Colburn, Corporal, looked to his leader and asked, “Perimeter?”
Roth nodded. “We’ll get Sarge fixed up and then we’ll find a way out of here.”
Cpl. Colburn and Spc. Gunn went opposite ways to keep an eye out for something or someone. They weren’t entirely sure.
----
Buckley owed much to the Sarge, as did they all. He was one of the finest soldiers they had served with, and a great leader of his troops – the kind of leader everyone rallied around and wanted to make proud. Not only had he kept them safe during most of their service, but when he had failed to do so he had at least gotten them out in one piece. If he hadn’t been so busy trying to keep the man from bleeding out, Buckley might have shed a few tears.
After getting the wound cleaned and all shrapnel pulled out, he had to get it closed and covered. Buckley couldn’t find any damage to the organs, but there was a cracked rib or two. “'Tis but a scratch!” Monty Python’s black knight might not be such a bad comparison, Buckley thought. Sarge did have a habit of cracking jokes in the thick of battle.
You couldn’t call it a pretty stitch by any means, but at least there wasn’t a gaping hole anymore. It would do the job – for now. Buckley dressed it, and wrapped a bandage around the torso to hold the dressing in place. He looked up at Sergeant Roth.
“He ain’t gonna make it like this. We need water, somewhere clean and warm to put him…”
Roth nodded, “We better get moving then.” He shouted to Colburn and Gunn, who were watching the perimeter, “Okay boys, let’s get moving!”
They gathered around their injured brother. Roth looked at his team.
“Alright, we’re gonna be heading in that direction”, he pointed towards a part of the surrounding forest that looked a little less dense than the rest. “We’ll want to head upwards to see if we can’t find ourselves a view of the area, but always in that direction, should be north on your compasses. Keep an ear out for the sound of water; our main objective is to find a river. Me and Buckley will carry the Sarge – Colburn, Gunn, you lead the way. Questions?”
They all had many questions, but none that were important right now, none that they could get answers for. Their mission was now to survive in an unknown area, and it was the time to act, not contemplate.
“Sarge is hanging on by a thread here, soldiers. He expects to wake up in a nice and comfy bed, with a scotch, a cigar and a hot, busty nurse by his side. Let’s not disappoint him.”
There were faint smiles and chuckles. Better than nothing – they were a tough crowd at the moment.
“Hooah”
---
They hadn’t found any water the first day, or any high ground. The area was uncannily flat. When their watches showed five in the afternoon they had made camp for the night. It had been three hours before the sun had set. They had taken turns guarding the camp throughout the night, and nine hours later the sun had risen. They’d adjusted their watches.
They we’re still making their way through the jungle. The compasses ensured they kept going in a straight line. They didn’t speak much – there was too much to think about. That is, during the moments when they weren’t busy scanning the area around them, tending to the injured Sarge, or setting or packing up camp.
Wherever they were, the place was almost as strange as the fact that they were there in the first place. The only sound they’d heard had been their own. No sounds of water, no wind or rustling of leaves, and no animal noises. Obviously the plants were getting water from somewhere – the vegetation was as lush as ever – but the ground wasn’t particularly moist, and once the sun had been up for a while any dew had evaporated.
At one point the emotions escaped the soldier’s discipline, and they had a discussion on where they were and why. Roth tried to kill the conversation and keep them focused, but when Buckley proposed his theory of it being a dream, tempers ran hot. They couldn’t agree on who was the dreamer and who were the dreams. Talk again fell to a minimum when they were done.
This wasn’t what Charlie had signed up for. Of course, he had accepted the risks of combat when he volunteered for service. He had been aware that he’d be put in an unfamiliar setting, far away from home. He had known that he would end up in unpredictable situations. He had realised there would be a chance he would die. But he hadn’t signed up for an explosion hurtling him off to a completely different part of the world, if not another world entirely. Charlie wasn’t just unhappy with his military service though, he was disgruntled with life. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. This wasn’t anywhere near how the world should be working. According to the geeks and scientists, that is. People like Buckley. Self-righteous know-it-alls that pretended to know how it all fit together. Sometimes he had wanted to punch Buckley square in the face just because of the look of him, with his skinny frame and glasses. Knock some sense into him. Or out of him, as the case might be.
No, Buckley was a good guy, a good soldier. The situation was getting to Charlie; the stress was piling up proportionately to how much time he had to think about it. He reached for his canteen and took a sip of water. There wasn’t much left, maybe enough for another day if he was really disciplined.
