The End of Her World

Chapter Fourteen-- Assault on the Center

Jason checked the safety on his gun. The roaring, percussion-like sounds of rattled Jason to his bones. Three other guys sat silently on the seats opposite from Jason, their faces hidden behind their helmets. Jason had opted out of wearing a helmet, he had always thought they looked ridiculous wearing them. His Kevlar vest was tight against his chest.

He opened a piece of paper. His wife’s last words echoed in his ears. “If you ever need me, write to me and burn the paper. Then I will see it.” He saw her gentle, strong face, her lustrous brown sheen of hair.

He half-cocked a pen, laid ink on paper. Tears dripped onto the paper.

“Sergeant Parker, wake the fuck up!” The captain  of the squad was shaking Jason’s shoulder.  “We’re at the RV.”

Memories rushed through Jason’s mind like a river of darkness. He saw bullets and blood, bullets and death, holding his brother as the life bled out of him. The War. The chopper and rifles brought it all back to him, the horrors of war.

“Jump, shithead!” the chopper pilot yelled. Jason gazed down, they were only ten feet from the ground. Jason jumped. The wind tore at his lungs, ripping the air out of them. He landed heavily on his side, driving the remaining air out of his lungs.

“Victor one, take point!” the captain  ordered.

Jason jammed a clip of ammo into his rifle, steadied his aim. He fell in behind Victor one who stalked forward, rifle up and ready. His heart thundered in his chest like a velvet hammer. Before them loomed an enormous concrete building, slung low and powerfully, towering radio stations reaching toward the sky. There was a hole in the chain link fence, the snow after it trampled by boots, and blood led in a crimson trail with two sets of footprints.

“Move forward,” ordered the captain from behind Jason. Victor one ducked through the torn coils, Jason following.

“Area one, clear!” announced Victor One. “Moving on to facility!”

“Sierra One, take up sniper position!”

Jason started at the sound of his code name, Sierra One. He nodded swiftly, and scanned around him, searching for a sniper place. A tall silo was on his left, with a sheltered area at the top. The silo resembled a black dagger thrust up from the bowels of the earth.

Jason broke rank and sprinted forward, reached the silo. Two hundred feet to climb. Too long. Jason fired an ascension cable toward the top and yanked himself forward, floating effortlessly up the tower, bouncing forward until he reached the top of the silo. From his backpack he snapped on a thermal image scope onto his sniper rifle. He punched the tripod attached to the barrel of his rifle and set his rifle down and peered through the scope.

Two glowing red figures stood behind a blue wall. “Two tangos at twelve o’clock,” Jason informed the captain in a low voice via radio. A snap of gunfire rang out and the two red figures collapsed.

“Two confirmed kills, over,” Jason relayed his sight through the radio.

“Copy that, Sierra one,” Jason watched as his squad pressed against a wall, reading to enter the building.

A crack of gunfire rang out, and blood formed a pink mist as one of the guys fell backward. “We’re in engaged!” yelled the sergeant.

Jason ripped his gun aside and peered through the scope, his heart pounding. A crimson spot of heat indicated the sniper. “Lined up!” He directed the black crosshairs between the sniper’s eyes. “Cold zero!” He pulled the trigger.

Blood and bones fragments plastered the wall opposite to the dead sniper. There was nothing left of his face, except an eyeball and a mass of angry red flesh. Jason gagged. He averted his eyes quickly.

“Sierra One, cover Charlie Four! He’s been hit!” ordered Victor One.

“Yes, sir. I’m coming down.” Jason unzipped his backpack, and pulled apart his sniper rifle and slid it into the bag and zipped it. He flipped the M4A1 rifle off his shoulder and pushed a clip into it.

He hooked a rappel cord to the wrought iron railing and jumped. He hit the ground, went into a sharp shoulder roll and sprinted toward Private Harris, the soldier who had been hit. Already a maroon pool of blood was spreading onto the snow frosted concrete.

“Harris, you’re gonna be fine.” Jason yanked a strip of bandages from his belt and bound them around the hellish wound on his side. “I’ll get you out of this.” Blood soon sullied the bandages.

Harris’ face was white as he reached to touch the bloody bandages. Jason guided his hand gently away. Jason grabbed the wounded soldiers side and hauled him onto his shoulders, grunting at the weight.

“We’ve cleared a path for you, Sierra One!”

Jason ran toward the door, kicked it open and found his squad looking through their scopes at something. He set Harris down gently and gazed through the holographic scope of his rifle. Through the window there was a group of kids on their knees, blindfolded, heads wrapped on some sort of pads and attached to computers. The kids were ranging from around six to eighteen.

Transfixed, Jason watched with horror. His eyes swept the kids, searching, searching desperately for Katrina’s chestnut hair, Sarah’s lithe frame. Nothing. No one. His heart thrashed in his heart, blood pounded in his ears.

Among all of the children paced soldiers, huge weapons clenched in their hands. There was a commotion on the left flank, a boy, about sixteen struggled, spitting out curses. A guard walked up to him, casually, as if to light a cigarette, pulled out a pistol and shot him in the head.

“ENGAGE!” yelled the captain.

Jason got to his feet and squeezed his trigger. A guard toppled backward and then a second, but it was too late. A third guard, armed with a light machine gun, opened fire. Blood fountained in the air as the children flew backward, bloody rag dolls in the wind.

“Nooooo!” A red haze rose from behind Jason’s eyes and he swooped forward, and smashed the guard in the face, with a nasty snap, broke his nose. He hit him again and again until the guard slipped to the ground, his face a mess of broken bones.

Jason knelt beside every child, checking every single ones pulse. Not one one was still alive. The ground was an ocean of blood, which he slogged through. His tears mixed into the blood, thinning it, his heart felt shattered.

“Where are they?” he wondered aloud. Katrina and Sarah were not there. He traveled along the line of corpses and closed their eyes with a single finger. Now none of their eyes stared at him accusingly, with milky, unseeing eyes.

“Move out,” ordered the captain.

The chopper hovered at a crazy angle at the edge of the mountain, the cockpit glittering in the shallow moonlight. There was a deep roar as it dipped down through the sky. The whipping of the rotors spun his dark, sweat slicked hair in a constellation.

“Get on!” ordered the pilot. Jason leapt up, grabbed the machine gun, and checked the bullet feed instinctively. The rest of the squad piled on, and laid Harris’s body on the ground. Jason must  have carried him for five miles. To no good. Harris was dead.

But Jason was close to Katrina. He could feel it.