V

Rick crawls out from beneath a mountain of unconsciousness. He finds himself back in Nam. How he fell asleep is beyond him. The sounds of jungle surrounds. Immediately he goes defensive, alert, and watchful. Both hurt. It’s hot too… hot but there is an ice-cold shiver running through his veins. Not Vietnam hot. No, Vietnam hot was like being pissed on with actual urine. Hot greasy watery air, and it was even somehow worse when it rained.

Yet where else has he ever encountered a jungle before?

The waking-up part bothers him. He was never one to malinger. Especially in a warzone. It's not like him. Not for the six years he did over there anyway. Wait… His thoughts are blurry. Which tour is this?

He is in the middle of a chirping jungle. It could be night or day.

Suddenly it dawns on him how much he hurts. His shoulder. Was he ever wounded? No. He doesn't want to touch it. How did he get hurt? Why doesn’t his memory want to function? He sits up. Bugs swarm him, biting and pinching. They buzz in his ears and land on his eyes. He doesn’t swat, veterans of the shit know that. Swat at them and they become even more insistent. Instead, he runs through a list of things he knows.

One; is he hurt or injured?. Yes, he is injured, maybe worse. His left arm won’t move at all and he knows the sickly sweet smell that is swallowing him is coming from that wound he can’t see.

Two; he is 20… again. No, that’s not right either. His thick fingers have grey hairs sprouting from them, odd. But before he can really devote any time to that he hears the angry chatter of a group of NVA soldiers. It sounds like a hunt. They smash through the bush shouting at one another.

They are coming for me, he decides. Yet he remains sitting, staring, unsure.

He reaches out with his right hand, if this is Vietnam he knows it will land on an old friend. Betsy. She went everywhere he did in the bush. Maybe she had different numbers on her butt, or was handed to him by different armorers, but she was always Betsy, his trusty belt-fed M-60.

He does as much of a 360 as he can with one arm but the only thing he finds is a shovel. He picks it up and stares at it, unsure of the how and why of this thing. It's a normal shovel. A hardware shovel to take it out back and make a garden-type shovel. Not an army shovel. Little bastards were weapons themselves.

The shovel is stained with mud and a coagulated black substance.

Seeing the mud on the spade brings it upon him and the other smells hit him. He retches. It’s in the onslaught of those smells, he remembers. The odd trio of small people acting like one big person. The sulfur-scented mud. The lizard. Rat! He calls his friend's name as the jungle begins to fade back into the shit-stained cave ledge. The track still stops just short of the chasm but continues into the dark cave entrance in front of him. He calls out for Rat again.

The angry chatter returns but it sounds a lot less like rampaging Vietcong and more like his buddy telling him everything was going to be alright.

"Careful there, Rick. I thought I was on a death watch." Rat puts his hand on Rick's shoulder but the bigger man shakes it off. Now even the bugs were fading away. The biting and pinching was becoming a sharp tingling feeling he felt all over his body. He definitely feels sick. Really, really sick. But sick or not, he decides sitting still does nothing for no one. So, he stands, the stinging and pinching getting worse initially but fading quickly until he stumbles. On wobbly knees, but leaning over, Rat comes to his rescue.

"Hey, fat ass, let me help." Instead of murdering him for the insult, Rick slumps some of his weight onto the smaller man, closes his eyes, and waits. Eventually, his blood stops racing and his head clears. He looks toward the cave entrance and the direction of the still intact rails.

“What do you want to do?" he asks Rat hoping for a sensible solution to come from him.

"Unless we can fly, we ain't going back the way we came. Not without that What-ever-the-fuck-it-was and its death machine.”

Neither talk as they look into the pitch black behind them. Is New York City really up there? He tries to do the math of where they might be under it, but the ride here was too twisty. They could be anywhere in the world for all he knew.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Then in unison, they look into the dark cave beyond the ledge.

Which way do you think they went.

Rick doesn’t reply. Mainly because he still can’t get his tongue to find words but also because he isn’t sure. The rickshaw and his money could have gone in either direction, he surmises, but going the easier way would be the preferred choice, so he says so. "We really need to get moving in case another one of those scaly fucks smells all this blood comes looking for an easy meal."

Rat nods but says, "What if that's where they live?"

"Well, we are about to find out."

His left arm hangs uselessly at his side and after a few careful, agonizing, practice swings with it, he hopes to God nothing attacks him again anytime soon. Shovel in one hand and after shoving the hand of his useless appendage into a coat pocket, they begin walking leaving the stinking carcass of his kill and the ruined remains of the wheelbarrow behind.

"Wonder how much they are going to charge for that thing."

His mind recoils at the thought, "it makes finding that wad of cash even more important," he says as they enter the mouth of the cave, his voice echoing loudly and resulting in the angry flurry of bats or something further ahead in the cave.

Walking is painful. Every step puts pressure on his swollen joints. If they don’t figure something out in the next couple of days it feels like he might be nothing but a memory anyway.

A bad one for almost everyone he ever met. That thought brings his son to mind. Removing him from his dead mother’s arms. And leaving. Leaving the war, and Asia. Coming home to New York and living an okay life. He was wanted as a deserter sure, but it didn’t matter because labor was brainless and plentiful. Then it came out, like all secrets eventually do, and as little as he had, he lost it all anyway. The boy, whether for good or ill, was in fact stolen.

Oh really, Rick took that kid home from Vietnam illegally!

He tried to reason with them, “What was I supposed to do, leave him there to die?”

He and three other grunts were ranging through North Vietnam. That was their job, long-range recon,. Soldiers were picked from normal units because they had proven to be able to do superhuman things, like survive for months behind enemy lines. Away from air support. Away from legalities. They were a small fire team; three of which were KIA in the same firefight that killed the boy's mother. Yes, he absconded with a baby. And got away with it for almost sixteen years, which at the end of, Sammy got his citizenship. That led him to have a fantastic life as a Ph.D. of literature, becoming a husband and father; and a published, respected author. It was worth it for that. Fuck what happens next. The twenty dollars he sent him, religiously, was just a symbol of a father who loves his son, regardless of what anyone said.

He shakes off thoughts of his boy. It’s not going to help anything to be on the verge of rage, he decides. He also decides to plunge through the cave entrance to see where it leads. Every step is agony until he gets his mind right. Pain does not kill. Those are the exact words he has screamed in many-a-ear of dying youths in the field. Was it pain that ultimately killed them? No, it was the sucking chest wound, or missing limb, or some other trauma of which there were many. But not the pain. Never the pain. Pain is a teacher. So, he tells his mind it’s nothing but a lesson, and it is. If that is a special skill, to turn off one’s brain when uncomfortable, then it’s a special skill most men who have braved the infantry, in its many varied forms, have eventually attained. If not, they don’t wear the blue for very long. Even shoved in a pocket the arm wobbles, so he lets it. as he sets his mind to getting used to the agony. Pain has been a lifelong companion anyway. He and Rat walk the track as it goes through the rock wall and runs for several hundred yards before turning right and heading toward a blinding light.

Once inside, the first thing they notice are the tags. Graffiti. It covers the entire cave. Walls, ceiling, floor. The paint glows in places throughout the cave and because of it, he has no need for an additional light source. The images on the walls are amazing. Most of them were of home. They are so intricate that the location is obvious. The subway features prominently. And famous buildings at night. People sleeping. Back seats of cars zooming through the countryside. Some focus was placed on treasure and riches but mostly the images portrayed technology. Simple machines like toasters and Televisions, all the way up to nuclear missiles. Gears and levers and giant smoking factories that produced who knows what. By the end of the short hike through the cave, he isn’t certain if he learned something or was just drowned in images, but is certain of one thing, he has never seen stuff like this before.

Except one place.

“In New York, there were groups of homeless that lived in the subway tracks, right?”

“Yah, yah I remember them," Rat replies.

“Remember, like past tense”

“No one knows where they went."

"But they used to camp with tags like these. I heard about them for that."

They did. They left tons of art behind.”

“Where do you think they went?”

“Not a clue, where would you go?”

Rick doesn’t answer. Because the answer is very passive, he goes where his son goes. He wishes he could show this to him, nothing excited the boy more than the subway.

Eventually, they arrive at the cave exit and penetrate the bright light streaming in, Once through, they are confronted with an enormous bowl-shaped valley covered with pines, firs, and spruces. But below deep is utter chaos. Flying contraptions that burp and fall out of the sky, others that zoom dangerously low as if without care, and others that look benign and safe. Fuzzy-headed creatures with small bulbous noses and giant eyes. And below the airborne is a thick white cloud that when the flying machines exit, they leave little trails of vapor behind. And when they enter they make a hole that hangs around for a bit. Through the holes, they see hints of a city that makes the chaos in the sky seem tame.

"Holy God," Rick whispers.

"They have to have gone done there, huh, Rick?"

Rick is about to answer when from above, the screech of a hawk grabs their attention. They shield their eyes from a bright blue sky but as things come into focus they don't see a hawk they instead see a net weighted with bolo balls coming straight towards them.

“Holy fucking shit! Rick tries to shield his head with his good arm. But it does no good as both are wrapped up tight as a bug in a bed.

WordsCharactersReading time

WordsCharactersReading time