[left] Eight weeks. Maybe nine. That's how long anyone caught out here has left to live. According to the news anchors, anyway. I’m surprised they said it without their usual inane cheeriness. It would have somehow seemed more real as "Later this evening: why your life will be over in two months. More at eleven. Now here’s Jasper with the weather!"
Except that they weren’t talking to me. They didn’t think anyone who saw those broadcasts would be crazy enough to get within miles of the city. Just like everyone else in my life they find it easier not to think about me. They’ll just pretend that I never existed in the first place and maybe i’ll go away. Maybe i’ll just disappear completely and everything will be back to normal, everything will make sense. And sometimes I think that might be the best I can hope for.
How did it come to this? Not a year ago I was doing just fine. Not spectacular, not even well, perhaps, but fine. The world and I kept trudging along and we stayed out of each other’s way as best we could. I was actually feeling optimistic, if you can believe it. Last spring, before my deployment, I really felt that I was moving forward in life. That all the work I had put in was finally starting to pay off. Those years of being a desk jockey, playing the political games, getting my degree, trace it all the way back to junior varsity football if you like. I felt that what I had earned was finally coming to me.
I can remember the day I left like it was yesterday. My father, reserved but secretly proud, shook my hand. My brother was even envious. Of course he was, with me about to see things that were to him only distant fantasies. For once Eleanor and I agreed on something: that some time spent apart would be helpful. She was hoping absence would make the heart grow fonder. I was just looking forward to a change of scenery and the chance to see some real action.
No, not just action. What I wanted was power. The power of life and death. What had I spent all those years training for if not the opportunity to use my skills to change the world? And there’s only one kind of change my skills can make. Maybe I signed up for king and country, for the memories, for the money, whatever. After I spent enough time in it was about killing. That’s why I kept going. For the chance to kill. Oh, God, I got my chance.
If I can remember my deployment like yesterday I can remember my first airstrike as if it happened seconds ago. It was standard stuff: a unit pinned down and requesting fire support. Straight out of the manuals but intoxicating because it was real this time. What I remember most was everyone telling me how easy it was. “You really lucked out, Sky. Perfect conditions for your first strike.” It was too easy. That’s what they said, that it was too easy. And that’s what makes me want to just explode.
The worst was immediately after. It was the silence on the radio. The understanding of what had just happened that went through everyone’s minds simultaneously. And that shaky voice, unwilling to believe but going through the motions anyway:
“… First platoon, report on fire mission, over… Say again, first platoon, was the fire mission successful?”
There were plenty of questions during the Court Martial and none at all from those who had called themselves my friends. Well, it’s not their fault. How could they ask questions of someone who doesn’t exist? Oh, I wasn’t going to die. The lawyers found a way to avoid that, thank God. No, that would be far too easy. A way to end my own desperate questions forever? I don’t deserve that.
The need for silence brought me here, though. I went from being no one at all to the name on everyone’s lips. Infamous for a week. No doubt thanks to that ridiculous nickname. Skyhammer. A joke, of course. I hadn’t called in a single airstrike in my twelve years, no one ever thought that I would. Everyone said that the war had changed. Hearts and minds are the weapons these days, not any of that flashy stuff. They were wrong, of course. So wrong.
Now I only ask questions with my rifle. I hurl them at every shadowy figure I see. The ones that we happen to call the enemy at least. They never get the chance to answer, though. I drown out their replies with the roar of fire from the sky. They use drones for the strikes now, you see. Really clever. They’re too smart to ever hit a good guy like me by mistake. Unless I get lucky. Unless I get close enough.
When I start thinking like that I tell myself that I need to get out. Out of this city, out of this country, and just start over. Live, I’ll tell myself. Live for those who you robbed of life. But if I do that I’ll have to think about them. Oh yeah, I’ll have to think about them a lot. I’d have to measure my every meager accomplishment with cruel clarity against who they could have been. Who they should have been. But I think it’s too late for that now. After all, I’ve only got eight weeks. Maybe nine.[/left]
