The air is being torn.
The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like sand on the beach.
Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.
Bullets hit the street. The impact of the bullets is the sound of a covey of quail taking flight. And sparks. You feel the shock of bullets punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.
People tell you what to do.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. If you stop moving, if you hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs are machines winding you up like a mechanical toy. If your legs stop moving, your taut spring will run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.
You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.
Sounds. Cardboard being torn. Head-on collisions. Trains derailing. Walls falling into the sea.
Metal hornets swarm overhead.
Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold eyes of guns. Pictures blink and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...
Your feet take you up...up...over the rubble of the wall...up...up...you're loving it...climbing, you're not human, you're an animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! DIE! DIE! DIE!"
Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.
Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles. People curse.
"Oh, fuck."
Keep moving.
Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the hell are my feet?
A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic rifle vibrates. The face is gone.
Keep moving.
And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound. The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins. You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"
You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for warm, wet cavities.
Your reaction to your own death is nothing more than a highly intensified curiosity.
A hand presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any legs. Tons of ocean water, dark and cold and populated by monsters, are crushing you. You try to raise your head. Hands hold you down. You fight. You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
"Legs..."
You cough up spiders.
On the ground beside you is a Marine without a head. Exhibit A, formerly a person, now two hundred pounds of fractured meat. The Marine without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom teeth are intact. In the hands of the Marine without a head is an M-60 machine gun, locked there forever by rigor mortis. His finger in on the trigger. His canvas jungle boots are muddy.
You look at the dried mud on the jungle boots of the Marine without a head and you are stunned that his feet look so much like your own.
You reach out. You touch his hand.
Something stings your arm.
Suddenly, you are very tired. You are breathing hard from the running. Your heart is beating so hard that it seems to want to tear its way out of your body. Through the center of your heart there is a star-shaped bullet hole.
Hands touch you. Gentle hands. "You're okay, jarhead. No sweat. I'm Doc Jay. Can you hear me? You can trust me, Marine. I got magic hands."
"No," you say. "NO!" You try to explain to the hands that part of you is missing in action. You want the hands to find the missing part; you don't want your missing part to be left behind. But you cannot speak. Your mouth won't work.
You sleep. You trust the hands that are holding you, the hands that are lifting you up.
In your dope dream of death you are an enlistment poster nailed to a black walclass="underline" THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN--BODY--MIND--SPIRIT.
You feel yourself breaking up into three pieces...you hear strange voices...
"What's wrong?" one voice says, confused and frightened. "What's wrong?"
"Who's there?"
"What?"
"Who's there?"
"I'm Mind. Are you--"
"Affirmative. I'm his Body. I'm not feeling well..."
"This is utterly ridiculous," interjects a third voice. "This can't be happening."
"Who said that?" Mind demands. "Body? That you?"
"I said it, fool. You may call me Spirit."
Body sneers. "I don't believe either of you."
Mind speaks slowly: "Now, we've got to be logical about this. Our man is down. We've got to get organized."
Body whimpers. "Listen, you guys, that's me lying there--not you. You don't know what it's like."
Mind says, "Look, you moron, we're all in this together. If he goes, we all go."
"Is he..." Body can't say the word. "I've got to survive."
"No," Mind observes. "Not necessarily. They play this game. I'm not sure we are allowed to interfere."
Body is horrified. "What kind of 'game'?"
"I'm not sure. Something about rules. They have a lot of rules."
Spirit says, "This guy pisses me off. I'm not going back."
Mind says, "You have to go back."
"On the contrary," says Spirit. "I do as I please. You two have no control over me."
"Forget him," says Body.
Mind insists, "But Spirit must return with us."
"No. We don't need him."
Mind considers the situation. "Perhaps Spirit has a valid argument. Perhaps I shouldn't go back either..."
Body is frantic. "NO! PLEASE...."
"Yet, actually, nothing would be achieved by not going back. Our actions will not affect their game in any event. Losing one man won't change the game one way or the other. In fact, losing men seems to be the whole point of the game. We must be practical. Come along, Body, we're going back."
Spirit says, "Tell the man I'm missing in action."
In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone tablets with lightning bolts you're got to be brief, about how the Free World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of death...