“Of course,” the lieutenant said. He nodded at Han. "It was Han sticking his bayonet in the thing’s side.”
For which it crushed his skull, Davis could not stop himself from thinking. He added his nod to the lieutenant’s. "Yes he did.”
“How is that different from shooting it?” Lee said.
“Your bullets went in one side and out the other,” Davis said. "Han’s bayonet stuck there. The thing’s healing ability could deal with an in-and-out wound no problem; something like this, though: I think it panicked.”
“Panicked?” Lee said. "It didn’t look like it was panicking to me.”
“Then why did it take off right away?” Davis said.
“It was full; it heard more backup on the way; it had an appointment in fucking Samara. How the fuck should I know?”
“What’s your theory?” the lieutenant said.
“The type of injury Han gave it would be very bad if you’re in a vacuum. Something opening you up like that and leaving you exposed…”
“You could vent some or even all of the blood you worked so hard to collect,” the lieutenant said. "You’d want to get out of a situation like that with all due haste.”
“Even if your healing factor could seal the wound’s perimeter,” Davis said, "there’s still this piece of steel in you that has to come out and, when it does, will reopen the injury.”
“Costing you still more blood,” the lieutenant said.
“Most of the time,” Davis said, "I mean, like, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a million, the thing would identify any such threats long before they came that close. You saw its ears, its eyes.”
“Black on black,” Lee said. "Or, no-black over black, like the corneas had some kind of heavy tint and what was underneath was all pupil.”
“Han got lucky,” Davis said. "The space we were in really wasn’t that big. There was a lot of movement, a lot of noise-”
“Not to mention,” Lee said, "all the shooting and screaming.”
“The right set of circumstances,” the lieutenant said.
“Saved our asses,” Lee said, reaching over to pound Han’s shoulder. Han ducked to the side, grinning his hideous smile.
“If I can cut to the chase,” the lieutenant said. "You’re saying we need to find a way to open up this fucker and keep him open so that we can wreak merry havoc on his insides.”
Davis nodded. "To cut to the chase, yes, exactly.”
“How do you propose we do this?”
“With these.” Davis reached into the duffel bag to his left and withdrew what appeared to be a three-foot piece of white wood, tapered to a point sharp enough to prick your eye looking at it. He passed the first one to the lieutenant, brought out one for Lee and one for Han.
“A baseball bat?” Lee said, gripping near the point and swinging his like a Louisville Slugger. "We gonna club it to death?”
Neither Davis nor the lieutenant replied; they were busy watching Han, who’d located the grips at the other end of his and was jabbing it, first underhand, then overhand.
“The people you meet working at Home Depot,” Davis said. "They’re made out of an industrial resin, inch-for-inch, stronger than steel. Each one has a high-explosive core.”
“Whoa,” Lee said, setting his on the ground with exaggerated care.
“The detonators are linked to this,” Davis said, fishing a cell phone from his shirt pocket. "Turn it on.” Pointing to the lieutenant, Han, Lee, and himself, he counted, "One-two-three-four. Send. That’s it.”
“I was mistaken,” the lieutenant said. "It appears we will be using stakes, after all.”
IV
2004
At Landstuhl, briefly, and then at Walter Reed, at length, an impressive array of doctors, nurses, chaplains, and other soldiers whose job it was encouraged Davis to discuss Fallujah. He was reasonably sure that, while under the influence of one of the meds that kept his body at a safe distance, he had let slip some detail, maybe more. How else to account for the change in his nurse’s demeanor? Likely, she judged he was a psych case, a diagnosis he half-inclined to accept. Even when the lieutenant forced his way into Davis ‘s room, banging around in the wheelchair he claimed he could use well enough, Goddamnit, Davis was reluctant to speak of anything except the conditions of the other survivors. Of whom he had been shocked-truly shocked, profoundly shocked, almost more so than by what had torn through them-to learn there were only two, Lee and Han, Manfred bled out on the way to be evac’d, everyone else long gone by the time the reinforcements had stormed into the courtyard. According to the lieutenant, Han was clinging to life by a thread so fine you couldn’t see it. He’d lost his helmet in the fracas, and the bones in his skull had been crushed like an eggshell. Davis, who had witnessed that crushing, nodded. Lee had suffered his own head trauma, although, compared to Han’s, it wasn’t anything a steel plate couldn’t fix. The real problem with Lee was that, if he wasn’t flooded with some heavy-duty happy pills, he went fetal, thumb in his mouth, the works.
“What about you?” the lieutenant said, indicating the armature of casts, wires, weights, and counterweights that kept Davis suspended like some overly ambitious kid’s science project.
“Believe it or not, sir,” Davis said, "it really is worse than it looks. My pack and my helmet absorbed most of the impact. Still left me with a broken back, scapula, and ribs-but my spinal cord’s basically intact. Not that it doesn’t hurt like a motherfucker, sir. Yourself?”
“The taxpayers of the United States of America have seen fit to gift me with a new right leg, since I so carelessly misplaced the original.” He knocked on his pajama leg, which gave a hollow, plastic sound.
“Sir, I am so sorry-”
“Shut it,” the lieutenant said. "It’s a paper cut.” Using his left foot, he rolled himself back to the door, which he eased almost shut. Through the gap, he surveilled the hallway outside long enough for Davis to start counting,
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, then wheeled himself to Davis ‘s head. He leaned close and said, " Davis.”
“Sir?”
“Let’s leave out the rank thing for five minutes, okay? Can we do that?”
“Sir-yes, yes we can.”
“Because ever since the docs have reduced my drugs to the point I could string one sentence after another, I’ve been having these memories-dreams-I don’t know what the fuck to call them. Nightmares. And I can’t decide if I’m losing it, or if this is why Lee needs a palmful of M &Ms to leave his bed. So I need you to talk to me straight, no bullshit, no telling the officer what you think he wants to hear. I would genuinely fucking appreciate it if we could do that.”
Davis looked away when he saw the lieutenant’s eyes shimmering. Keeping his own focused on the ceiling, he said, "It came out of the sky. That’s where it went, after Han stuck it, so I figure it must have dropped out of there, too. It explains why, one minute we’re across the courtyard from a bunch of hostiles, the next, that thing’s standing between us.”
“Did you see it take off?”
“I did. After it had stepped on Han’s head, it spread its arms-it kind of staggered back from Han, caught itself, then opened its arms and these huge wings snapped open. They were like a bat’s, skin stretched over bone-they appeared so fast I’m not sure, but they shot out of its body. It tilted its head, jumped up, high, ten feet easy, flapped the wings, which raised it another ten feet, and turned-the way a swimmer turns in the water, you know? Another flap, two, and it was gone.”
“Huh.”
Davis glanced at the lieutenant, whose face was smooth, his eyes gazing across some interior distance. He said, "Do you-”