His grief had turned quickly to anger. I couldn’t blame him for being mad. So was I. But Lizzie was already gone. There was a greater threat somewhere. Something was wrong. But my troop was leaving, and I had to follow.
I packed up, and Sid and I took the stairs together, watching each other’s back. We met with the rest of the platoon at the trucks and loaded in. This time, for maybe the first time ever, we rode separately, and I didn’t stop to consider that nobody would be there to watch Sid’s back.
I needed to have a word with the lieutenant.
But, God, how quickly it would all change …
“Don’t start with me, Tailor,” he grumbled the moment I took my seat.
“You would all be dead right now if it wasn’t for me,” I said, raising my voice above the rumble of the engine. “Lizzieis dead because ofyou.”
I knew better than to speak to my superior this way, but fuck that.
The lieutenant slowly turned to glare at me. His eyes narrowed; his nostrils flared. “I will pretend you didn’t just talk to me like that, Sergeant. We all lost a friend; I’ll let it slide. But if you say one more thing out of line, I will make you sorry you opened your fat fucking mouth. Do you understand me?”
“You—"
“One more word, Tailor, and I’ll have you scrubbing my toilet with your fucking toothbrush for the next week! You better think—"
The ground shook, and the sky lit with an explosion. It took a moment to process what was happening as I watched the truck ahead of us fly off the road. I held fast to the grab bar beside me as the soldier behind the wheel of our truck came to a screeching halt yards away.
“Sid,” I whispered, my voice high-pitched and strained.
He was in that truck.Oh God. They must’ve hit an IED. He was in that fucking truck.
I have to go to him.
I jumped out of the truck as the lieutenant screamed, “What are you doing, Tailor?! Get back in this truck! Do you hear me?!”
Logic told me to stay. Logic told me to listen to him, to obey his order. But a seven-nation army couldn’t hold me back from finding my best friend and seeing if he was alive. If he wasn’t, there was nothing more I could do for him, but if he was …
“Sid!” I shouted as I neared the smoking truck, gun held high. “Sidney!”
As I came closer, I could see the soldier who had been behind the wheel was dead, impaled by a piece of shrapnel. His eyes open, unseeing. The soldier beside him had suffered a similar fate. There was nothing I could do for those men. But a couple of groans came from inside the open back seat, and a glimmer of hope was alight in my heart as I saw the two privates I hardly knew—alive. They were injured, bleeding from cuts to the head and clutching broken limbs.
Without a second thought, I assisted them both in getting out. When they swore they could manage to get to the others themselves, I continued in my search of Sid.
I didn’t have to look for long.
“Serg …” His whisper was coupled by moans of agony, coming from beside the vehicle.
“Sid, I hear you, buddy. I’m coming,” I said, rounding the truck, following his voice, and then I saw him. “Oh God. No. Fuck. Sid …fuck!”
A quick assessment was all I needed to see he’d been thrown from the truck during the explosion, only for it to land on top of him, pinning his leg beneath one of its tires. There was blood everywhere. Dread and despair washed over me, coalescing in the pit of my gut as Idropped my rifle to the ground and fell to my knees beside him, scrambling to reach his side.
He was breathing rapidly, his skin pale and clammy.
His wide, tear-filled eyes met mine as he lifted his head, attempting to look down over his broken body. “My leg, Max. Oh my fucking God, my leg. Can you see it?”
“I see it, man,” was all I could say.
“Holy fuck. What … what the fuck am I going to do? I-I’m gonna die here.” The tears started to flow quickly from his eyes as he laid his head back against the rocky ground. “Oh Jesus, Max. I don’t wanna die. I-I-I don’t wanna fucking die.”
I knelt over him and pressed my hands to his cheeks, and my eyes bored right through his. “You arenotfucking dying in this hellhole. Do you hear me? You are not fuckingdying.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, sobbing and struggling to catch his breath, and I slapped my palm against his cheek.
“Look at me, Sid!”
