Actions On the Terminal Objective
“Coward,” he replied. “You’re all cowards and traitors!”
He turned to the sergeant and the MPs, who kept their rifles trained on him now. “Cowards!” he said, as he pushed another body into the trench with a bullet in its neck.
Next came the lieutenant, and after him the chaplain and then the commander of the Advance Fleet. He shot them in the backs of their necks and pushed them into the trench with drunken gusto. Every person that had ever done him wrong got their just deserts now. Each sandbag revealed another of his tormentors.
And then it was Tina’s turn. He shot her in the neck and she fell in slow-motion, landing face up atop the corpses in the trench, still alive, reaching out for him. Furious, he screamed, “You’re not my sister!” as he sent bullet after bullet smashing into her.
She smiled in the sad, sympathetic way she had back on the ship whenever homesickness and despair got the best of him. It was the smile that said she knew how badly he hurt because she hurt just as badly but as long as they stuck together everything would be okay.
“We were supposed to be together,” he sobbed, dropping the empty pistol.
She nodded. Though he could barely hear her voice through his protective mask, he saw her mouth the words, “I know, Karl.” Spreading her arms, she beckoned him to her. Somehow, her voice found its way inside his mask, as if she were whispering in his ear. “Don’t you see? Now we can be together.”
Karl’s heart leapt at the words he longed to hear. He could hardly believe it. At last, they would be together, not as brother and sister, but as man and woman, just as he’d fantasized during the interminable voyage from Earth. Tina ran her hands behind her head, pulling her long, dark hair loose so that it spread out over the bloody corpses surrounding her. She sank back and closed her eyes.
“Tina!” screamed Karl, but she didn’t respond. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the sergeant. Frantic, he shoved the sergeant away and dove into the trench after Tina.
The impact of landing brought him back to his senses. At first he didn’t know what had happened, lying face down on the bodies. He struggled to stand, but lost his footing and fell back. It was then he realized where he was, staring up past the edge of the trench into the sun with its psychedelic halo from his steamed up eye-lenses.
The bodies grasped him with their dead hands, holding him down, pulling him under. He screamed and struggled, but they were too many for him. He began to choke and vomit. The whiskey-bile burned on its way up. Gasping for breath, he tried to clear his mask, but it was no use. In desperation he pulled it off and rolled onto his side, breathing at last, dry-heaving into a ruined, simian face.
Someone lowered a ladder into the trench. He crawled across the bodies to it, pulled himself out and collapsed on the ground. The MPs grabbed his arms and dragged him away to the quarantine area.
~*~
Smitty lay on the grass in the quarantine area. He looked comfortable without his mask or suit, his head propped up on his helmet, smoking a cigarette.
The medic had given Karl another mask, although it felt as if the filters were nearly clogged.
“It’s actually pretty nice here,” said Smitty. “You ought to take all that crap off.”
Karl looked down at him. “Do you have it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got it. But I don’t even give a damn any more.” Smitty opened his hand and studied his cyanide tabs. “In a little while it’ll be over.” He suddenly grunted and drove his head straight back into the grass and arched his back high in the air. His legs thrashed and his fists pounded against his chest. He twisted onto his side, writhing and rolling so that Karl had to jump aside to avoid him. Finally he curled up into a fetal position, his face twisted and his mouth bleeding, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
“Jesus,” he whispered as the seizure subsided. “I am so fucked.”