The Long Walk Back - Rachel Dove

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broken buildings, busted vehicles, shattered people. There is no beauty on the news, but it exists here. We fear what we don’t know, what we can’t control, but here people live the same as us in many ways. I have seen photos on walls, gardens lovingly tended, children loved and cared for. The actions of few cause the outcome for many, and I saw it every day. I joined to serve, to have a purpose, but I also enlisted to find the family I never had. So now I fought for them too, with them by my side.

      There had been a lot of unease the last few weeks, and you could feel the stress, the taut emotions of the people and the enemy, even through the hot, dry air. I had had a bad feeling in the pit of my gut for days, and when the shots had started firing, I knew why. They had been gearing up to take us down, and as prepared as we thought we were, we were still caught with our pants down that day.

      ‘Pull back!’ I boomed gruffly to my charges. ‘Come on, go, go, go!’ I started to run for the nearest building, the one we had just finished sweeping. It was abandoned, full of empty homes, food still rotting on tables that would never host a family meal again. I kept looking over my shoulder, watching my guys take shelter one by one. A hail of shots whizzed past my ear, and I threw myself against the side of the nearest car. Hunching down, I looked to where the shots were coming from. Two of my guys were still on the way to the shelter – one hunched over, not moving. The other, Travis, was dragging him to safety. Blood followed them like a trail of gunpowder as they desperately tried to escape. Another barrage of shots rang out, and Travis jerked. He had been hit, but he kept going, pulling Smithy along with him, hung over his shoulder. They weren’t going to make it. I jumped up, firing a volley off at the top of the building, the source of the shots but they fired back. Hunching down again, I shouted at Travis to get a move on, grabbing my radio and running towards them.

      ‘Hightower, can you see him?’ I screamed into the radio. My sniper on the roof, Bradley, was my ace in the hole.

      ‘Nearly, the slippery bastard is hidden well. He has a child up there with him, using him as a human shield.’

      I cursed under my breath. I reached Travis and grabbed Smithy from him. Travis was bleeding badly, but it looked like a shoulder wound.

      We ran hell for leather towards the shelter, Hightower screaming into the radio.

      ‘He’s reloading Coop, get a move on!’

      I was almost at the shelter, Travis was just ahead, racing to get ready to help Smithy, who was still out cold. My muscles burned from the effort of dragging him along with me, but I ignored the pain, pushing on.

      ‘Almost there,’ I shouted back into the receiver. ‘Find a shot, and take him down!’

      Hightower acknowledged and just as we reached the lip of the shelter, shots rang out again, this time with the ‘phut phut’ of the sniper rifle as Hightower followed orders. I was just wondering whether the poor child on the roof was okay, when a huge force pushed me straight off my feet, into the air. I reached out to tighten my grip on Smithy, but felt nothing but space. Hitting the ground, I struggled for breath, dust and debris raining down around me. Hightower was screaming down the air waves, mobilising the others.

      I struggled to breathe, and my mouth was coated with a new layer of dust every time I managed to pull in a ragged breath. I could hear commotion around me, and moved my head to the side to look for Smithy. I could see him a few feet away, and I knew without a doubt he was dead. I turned away, already wanting to erase the memory of his crumpled form from my memory. I coughed, and felt a warm trickle run down my cheek. Not good¸ I thought to myself. I could hear my friends, my comrades in arms, running towards me, firing shots off, barking orders at each other. There was no white light, no images of me running around in short trousers, nothing. I could see nothing but dust, flashes of weaponry, and the smell of panic and desperation in the air. I felt bone tired, and a little voice inside of me told me to sleep. I tried to shake my head, keep myself awake, but the warm feeling spread through me. My body wasn’t responding. It was like slipping into a hot bath after a long, cold day. I could feel my muscles began to relax, and my throat filling up with liquid. I tried to spit, to turn my head, but my eyelids were already fluttering. I thought of the boy, no doubt dead now on the rooftop. I wondered if he had parents around to grieve for him, people who would mourn his death. And that’s the last thing I remember.

      Kate was pulling faces into the camera when the call came in to tell her casualties were en route. She turned around to face the opposite direction, shielding her son from the images of people who had been running behind her.

      ‘Mummy has to go now, sweet pea, but I will call you back as soon as I can, yeah? Remind Dad to take you to football practice after school, okay?’ Her son rolled his eyes.

      ‘He never checks the calendar Mum, you know that. When are you coming home?’ Trevor tapped her on the arm, waving to her son’s image on the phone screen.

      ‘Hey Jamie, good luck at practice! Kate, we have to go,’ he said, frowning in apology. From the look on her colleague’s face, it was bad. She blew a kiss at her son. Jamie rolled his eyes but blew one back.

      ‘I am eight Mum, when I’m nine there are no more kisses, okay? It’s well embarrassing!’

      Kate laughed. ‘No deal kiddo. I will be wanting kisses when you are all grown up. I have to go, see you soon. Love you.’

      Jamie smiled weakly. She knew that this was hard for him too, but she couldn’t miss the opportunity. ‘Love you too Mummy,’ he said, and his face disappeared from view as the call ended. She knew he would understand when he was older. She hoped that he would be proud that his mother went out there, did something with her life; that he would remember that instead of the times she worked late, went away, was an absent parent. Mothers were a different breed to fathers. Fathers could have it all, but mothers were judged no matter what they did. She loved Jamie, but when she stood there in a messy house, with leaking breasts and a screaming newborn, she knew it would never be enough. He was her world, but she still wanted the moon and the stars. Men could have that and no one batted an eyelid. A woman wanted to do the same? Judgement would follow. She wanted Jamie to grow up in a world where that particular glass ceiling was gone, replaced by open sky. If she could help smash it, all the better. She would make it up to him when she got back.

      Kate threw the phone into her bag, grabbed her scrubs after throwing her clothes onto her cot bed and got herself ready in record time. Grabbing her kit, she raced to follow Trevor to the hospital tent nearby. She covered her eyes as best she could from the dust that the incoming helicopter kicked up in the sandy dirt that their medical camp was perched on.

      Doing a three-month stint with the Red Cross as a trauma surgeon was not for the faint-hearted, but Kate Harper loved every bloody minute of it. She had two weeks left, and although she missed her boy dearly, she knew that going home to her usual hospital job would be an adjustment. Not as much as it would be going home to Neil, her husband of seven years. She had to admit to herself, the distance between them lately mounted up to more than miles, and she didn’t quite know what to do about it. The thought of seeing him again filled her with anxiety. She knew that this trip had changed something between them, it had stretched the elastic of their relationship thin. She wasn’t sure it could spring back this time. Did she even want it to?

      Being here was a very different kind of working away. Their phone calls were always snatched seconds. When she did get time to call, the signal often dropped, leaving them to play frustrated phone tag with each other. When he was away for work at conferences, they could chat leisurely. Him from his safe snug hotel room at the side of some motorway. Her from their bed, with their son sleeping soundly nearby. Their conversations consisted of errands to run, Jamie’s school day, their work days. The logistics of their married life together. Here, the calls were clipped, short. Checking in. Are you and Jamie okay? Is it bad there? She couldn’t talk about her day. What would she tell him, about the lives she saved? The ones she lost? She didn’t want to think about them, let alone try to form words, to explain them to a man who worked in a safe office all day, watching the clock for meeting times, not

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