Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

She listens to her news being whispered back down the line. She waits for Cole to put an end to it, but he remains silent, knowing they need to digest this new reality.

“Was it . . . ?” Suarez doesn’t know quite how to finish that sentence.

“It didn’t take long,” Rio says. “Doc did his best, but the whole thing, maybe two minutes.” A very long two minutes. Two minutes that will resonate, that will spread into all the minutes to follow.

There is no follow-up question. The remaining eleven members of the squad ruminate on the fact that a man can be alive and talking and normal, and a second later be bleeding on the sand, and dead within two minutes.

Two minutes.

A long time for a dying man to think about the things he’ll never experience.

There are photos in Rio’s inner pocket, wrapped in oilcloth to keep the wet at bay. She wants to look at these pictures. She wants to remember those memories. She wants to push the other thing, this new and terrible thing, down below those gentler memories, dismiss it, put it in a box, like Sarge said.

In some way she cannot explain, Kerwin’s death makes Rachel’s death more real. Until now death has been an idea, a thing she could examine from a safe distance. It has touched her, but only through loss, not physically, not graphically, not with blood on her hands. One day Rachel was alive in Rio’s mind, the next she was gone, and Rio misses her, but Rachel’s death happened far away. Rio has had to imagine Rachel’s death. Cassel’s death requires no imagination.

“Probably didn’t hit the dirt fast enough.” A barely audible whisper from Jenou, bunching up like she shouldn’t. Instinctively moving closer to Rio.

“He never was quick,” someone else offers. “Still . . .”

“Yeah . . .”

“Okay, knock it off,” Cole says, finally shutting the whispers down now that everyone had at least been told the basics. “Back in line, Castain, and keep your goddamn intervals.”

What else should I tell them? The way his last breath made a sound like a straw at the bottom of a milk shake? The way he emptied his bowels so that he stank? The slickness of his blood? The way it looked like chocolate syrup in the dark?

They march on, miles passing beneath sore feet. Now the sky is clearing as thick, low cloud gives way to the higher, thinner stuff. The moon has set, but the stars are able to peek through in patches, so now Rio can actually see where she’s going and even see a bit beyond Luther.

Heel, toe. Heel, toe. She hears the cadence call in her head. Your left, your left, your left, right, left. The soft crunch of boots on hard dirt. The squishy sound when they hit mud. The many sounds of straps chafing, and uniform pants rubbing, and packs straining, and her helmet riding on the tops of Rio’s ears, which means she needs to adjust her helmet liner, though not just now. Definitely not taking her helmet off just now.

They were taught in basic that a helmet is not there to stop bullets. It is just there to stop ejected rifle brass and falling shrapnel from hitting your head. A bullet? A German rifle bullet will pass right through the steel helmet like a hot knife through butter.

Rio isn’t taking her helmet off to adjust it, no, not just yet; she’ll take what armor she can get. She’s seen now what bullets do. But after a while Rio’s mind travels away. It goes to that far-off movie theater. It goes to the last letter from Strand, the one where he sounded just the slightest bit distant, as though maybe he had not really been in the mood to write to her.

From there it goes to questions of whether she was a fool thinking that one real date, a few stolen kisses on the Queen Mary, and a couple of letters mean they have a real relationship. What are they, even? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Absurd. Going steady? Those are school notions. Those terms are from another life.

And from there her memory inevitably wanders to the Tiburon and Jack. She glances back at him but sees nothing but his helmet over Sticklin’s shoulder.

It was nothing, really. Nothing. Really. Even Jenou said it was nothing. Forget it. Rio is Strand’s girl. But that definite statement leads her imagination to questions about women in the air corps. They are almost certainly pretty. Why wouldn’t they be? Of course they are: a smart, good-looking young woman would naturally choose air corps over army, if she could, and if she had a lick of sense.

In my own defense, I just wanted to drive a truck.

Strand is probably already bored with the idea of her, of little Rio from Nowhere, America. Yes, he is from that same nowhere, but that will just make some bold floozy from the big city all the more enticing to him.

She chews on that for a few miles and then begins to think about life after the war. What would that be? First, she will finish school, of course. Then . . . Well, what then? College? She would be only the second person in her family to ever finish high school, and if she went to college, the first Richlin ever to do so.

Or she could forget schooling, get married, and have children. And cook. And clean house. Help the children with their homework. Say things like, “Just wait till your father gets home.”

Not yet. First this. First war.

Gradually, as the long, slow miles pass, Rio stops thinking about anything really, and just walks. She’s had practice at that. Walking doesn’t take much thought after the first few miles.

The sun turns the horizon pink, then golden, the light picking out random objects—a single big boulder sitting all by itself, a stump, a misshapen tree, the peaks of the mountains in the distance off to the right. A random beam of sunlight peeking just for a moment through the clouds brightens half of Jenou’s face but leaves her eyes in the shadow of her helmet. But the dawn has not penetrated the space directly ahead of the column; they march still toward darkness.

Somewhere out there artillery is blasting away, a sound like far-off thunder. Someone was catching hell, and she hopes it’s them, the enemy.

Kill them all, artillery, kill them all before they can kill me.

“Geer, fall back. Richlin, take point,” Cole says.