The
Line by William Galaini
Excerpt
1.
Mary
wasn’t certain what woke her up. Her body was long and taut like a firm rubber
band, and in a sleepy haze she stretched out with a prolonged groan. Soon
after, she pulled her tangled hair from her face and first one eye was purged
of morning crusties, then the other. Curling her toes, tensing her calves, and
stretching again, she placed her bare body on display. A childhood of ballet
had carved her and leaned her down and now at college in her second year, she
discovered her interests to be in the humanities, to the dismay of her mother’s
expectations and her father’s bank account.
Flopping
a clumsy, sleepy arm to her side, she felt the pillow next to her and found it
to still be warm, but vacant.
Last
night had been simply amazing and
even the dreaded thought of calling her parents with the news couldn’t dull her
elation. She and Trevor had spent yesterday afternoon studying on the dormitory
lawn, sprawled out in the fat blades of the Florida grass, and as the sun went
down he had handed her a book out of his backpack.
“I
know you like dark stuff,” he had said. “It’s by Victor Hugo. About a kid who
is kidnapped, his face cut up, and raised as a circus freak. Don’t worry,
though. He kills everyone.” Trevor presented it with his usual musing grin and
Mary rewarded him with a snicker at his description.
“Well,
the French love this writer so there it is,” she said as she took the hardback
novel from him. Quickly she realized it had a small lump in it. Shaking it upside-down,
something fell out and glittered in the grass between her feet. Instantly Mary
knew what it was and hesitated for a moment before digging for it frantically,
tearing up green blades, dirt, and thick roots. Her fingers halted when she
found it.
“Go
on…” Trevor encouraged from somewhere above her. Mary lifted a simple gold band
with a small solitaire diamond; a visually sad offering of a ring but the
loveliest thing she’d ever seen. She began to cry.
“I
read in one of your magazines that crying can be the best sign or the worst . . .” Trevor said, seeming
anxious. “And don’t worry about it being so small. I figured after we’re
married for a few years and have saved up I can buy you a new one and that
little diamond there can be on the
side or something.”
Mary
was crying full bore now. “Shut up,” she squeaked as she grabbed him around the
neck and held him in a loving grip. “Yes. Dear God, yes. Always yes. Yes a long time
ago.” After a few minutes of holding each other and rocking back and forth she
added, “The ring is perfect. It’s just perfect.
I’d rather you save your money for down the road or something.”
“My
car needs brakes,” Trevor confessed. His car was notorious for announcing its
presence to every stop sign and stop light with a loud screech.
“Yeah,
get your brakes.” She laughed, trying to salvage her makeup while wiping tears
away. Finally, she looked him dead on in the eyes. “Really?”
She
bit her lip. “Okay, but I so have to
fuck you like, right now.”
Trevor
mock sighed, and pretended to look about in search of a bush or trash bin to
hide behind. After his pantomime was played out, they went back to her dorm
room. Sometime between the giggling and the orgasms she managed to call her
roommate and ask her to sleep elsewhere.
Pizza
was ordered. His parents were called and they were delighted. The TV was on but
was never watched. Drinks were mixed. Futures were discussed. Music was played
and sung along to. And eventually they both slept naked, curled up in her small
bed intended for only one occupant.
Mary
rubbed her eyes while blinking against the morning sun that sliced through the
blinds. Then she heard the shower, and assumed it was Trevor closing the
bathroom door that had awakened her. She smiled, and pushed the thought of
calling her parents far back into her mind. Sitting up, she looked about for
her coffee that was left from the night before. “Trevor, have you seen my
coffee? I had half a cup left somewhere around here.”
She
started to wrap herself in the sheets to look around for her coffee, but with a
whimsical chirp she stood out of bed, naked. “This is how I will dress when I’m
walking around the house.”
The
dorm room was actually two rooms; essentially a sleeping area separated from a
study area with two computer desks, a micro fridge, and a second TV. Mary
stepped out of the bedroom into the study and gasped at how cold it was. She
scampered back into bed with a squeal, her teeth chattering.
“Trevor,
when you get back, bring me my coffee, it’s in a mug on the fridge! From last
night!” she called out. A muffled ‘okay’ came from behind the bathroom door
while the shower turned off.
Mary’s
mind drifted toward more serious things. Would her parents pull her out of
school because of Trevor? Where would they live? Who would actually pay for the
wedding? Her parents certainly could, but would they? Who would the bridesmaids
be? What kind of home could they afford? She felt the stress mounting, and
wished Trevor would hurry out of the bathroom so that he could make everything
better.
Wyatt
looked to the heads-up display that covered his face and saw that he was
standing in Sierra Leone, West Africa, thirty miles northeast of Freetown. The
year was 1994 and the sun stabbed spears of light through the leafy canopy
overhead. The common thunderstorms of October had already passed, and the drier
air made the leaves vibrant and the breeze less suffocating.
There
was a serenity to the wilderness around him that was betrayed the moment he
looked at the surrounding carnage.
Wyatt’s
feet were silent, even to the birds and insects about, and he softly toed his
way among the spent shell casings and strewn viscera toward the table at the
center of the abandoned rebel camp. Not a soul breathed except Wyatt and his
partner, Rupert.
“We’re
clear,” Wyatt said after clicking his com on with his tongue. Despite Rupert
being a mere twenty feet away, it was the only way for them to verbally
communicate. “I’m not seeing anything breathing within sixty yards of camp.
What have you got there?”
With
the hints of a crisp West Indies accent, Rupert responded. “I have a trophy
table. I count twelve among the dead, but there are more trophies here than
that number…so I suspect either prisoners were taken post-amputation or we’re
missing a stash of bodies…”
“There
are tracks leading out of camp in several directions with blood and tar on the
leaves. Maybe the assailants diced them and then dipped the wounds in one of
the tar buckets and sent them on their way. Old Navy trick.”
“Maybe
…” Rupert replied skeptically. Wyatt looked about some more. Several of the
shelters were built into half-dug mounds for keeping them temperate as well as
disguised from the air, so he decided to explore one of those. Careful not to
slip in the blood pools on the dirt-ramp that led down, Wyatt disappeared into
darkness. “Looks like a makeshift armory,” he said, as much for Rupert’s ear
buds as Wyatt’s own records. “The usual. Some surface-to-air, AK’s, kids’
versions of AK’s, mines, a lot of Russian made ordnance, but hardly from Russia
… most likely diamond-bought from neighbors who in turn got them from the
Ukraine…” Wyatt put his face as close as he could without touching the leaning
rifle in order to try to read the serial number. “Yep, Ukraine. Made post-bloc
and second or third hand.”
Looking
further, Wyatt found maps of the region on the wall as well as photos of
various local women being gang-raped or beaten to death. A few pictures were of
both at once. “These guys were RUF.” Wyatt added finally.
“Clearly,
given the year,” Rupert said. “Check out the tent next to that building you’re
in and tell me what you think. After that, you’ll really want to see what is on
this table I’m looking at…”
“Wilco,”
Wyatt said, not unhappy about leaving the armory and its garish photography.
Stepping back into the shafted sunlight, he could stand his full height, and
spent a moment taking in the camp, as a whole, before moving on.
There
were bodies everywhere. The black
skin of the Sierra Leone rebels, in some ways, hid how much blood there really
was. Blackened and baked, the bodily fluids had soaked into the ground and
saturated the torn uniforms and casual clothes the RUF had worn. Some of the
dead had their heads literally crushed into the dirt, collapsed with eyes
bulging and tongues bitten off into the dust. Others had crumpled sternums,
ribs crackled into spider-leg compound fractures jutting up from their chests
toward the peeking sun. One man had his pants around his ankles with his
genitals torn off and shoved into his mouth. It was clear that while under
attack, they were in various stages of dress and preparedness. They had been
taken completely off guard.
Wyatt
was a veteran of many military and government sanctioned conflicts. Some of
those conflicts never even had names. He had seen enough bloodshed and violence
that he stopped wondering where his tolerance for it would stop. What he
witnessed here was something entirely new. Trying to form the words to explain how astounded he was,
Wyatt found that adjectives failed him. So he moved on to the tent that Rupert
had indicated prior.
Instantly
it was clear what the tent was. In the far back, at the center, was a small
television. There were two rows of twig and straw beddings that lined the whole
tent and all about were pornographic magazines, board games, empty wine
bottles, and drug paraphernalia. Toeing around the bedding, tossed clothes, and
bottles, Wyatt made his way to the TV and looked at the VHS cassette tapes.
Rambo 2, various Jason and Freddy horror movies, and a few unlabeled tapes were
present.
It
was clearly a tent for training child soldiers, and at the center of it was a
body crushed to the limit of human recognition, its spine bent almost ninety
degrees.
Wyatt
was familiar with the ‘recruitment’ process of snatching up refugee children,
making them think their families rejected them, and desensitizing them through
drugs, porn, violence, and cruelty. “Okay, but there are no bodies of kids
anywhere.” Wyatt walked through the back of the tent nearest the jungle’s brush
line and found a whole row of tiny tracks leading into the darkened depths of
the distance. He was about to comment on how they clearly weren’t running given
the length between each footprint when he saw a new pair of footprints. They
weren’t boots. They looked more like bare feet. And the distinct prints were
massive and deep compared to the small march of children’s tracks. All led to
the jungle.
Wyatt
crouched down at the large prints to make sure his recording devices would pick
up everything possible. He switched his HUD to heat vision, cycled through
electromagnetic fields, and took a near-silent sonic ‘ping’ that would map out
the dimensions of the print. The on-board computer displayed across his vision
that the footprint had been pressed into the ground by over three hundred
pounds of pressure at a whopping shoe size of eighteen or beyond.
Wyatt
gazed out into the jungle, to wherever the large-footed person had guided those
children, and wondered where and if he could see someone looking back. He
allowed himself a moment.
“Okay,
let me see this trophy table.” Wyatt walked around the tent, always cautious of
where he was stepping and how hard. To disturb anything whatsoever was a major concern. On his way, Wyatt found another print
… large, perfect, and deeper in the front – as if the owner had stomped on the
ball of their foot and pivoted… but there were no accompanying prints near it.
Mind
still aflutter with the mental sketch of these large assailants, he wasn’t
quite ready for what Rupert had to show him. He stood across the table from
Rupert, looking down at the large arranged pile of collected hands on top of
it. Rupert was constantly tilting his head to allow his eye pieces to take
detailed measurements and readings. Some fingers were broken and twisted, but
nearly every hand was cleanly severed, some prior to death and some after.
Wyatt sighed.
“This
is the single largest act of anger I have ever seen. It’s a bloody marvel.”
He
had finally found the words he had been looking for.
