A Fountain Filled With Blood

They had just reached the stream when an enormous whumpf sent them sprawling on their bellies. It was like the hammer of God striking the forest, a sound so huge, it seemed a solid thing pressing them down. Clare could feel the air around them compress, causing pressure in her inner ears. Then came the rush of hot wind, blasting out through the forest, shaking leaves wildly and sending a torrent of birds squawking into the skies. Then the wind was gone, like a departed train, and she could hear a clattering, crackling, roaring noise from where they had left the helicopter and the pipe bowl’s worth of smoke.

She rolled over and sat up. Russ pushed himself onto his knees. She looked at him, amazed, excited, and profoundly grateful to be sitting there, filthy, sweat-stained, aching in every muscle.

“We made it!” she said.

He dropped to his hands and knees and threw up.

Chapter Thirty

Russ was conscious of two things: the sour taste in his mouth and the cold water pouring over his head and shoulders.

He heard a voice making sympathetic noises, felt the weight of the backpack being lifted off him, the straps tugging over his arms. His ribs ached, his knees were throbbing, and the slow wind rolling over him felt like waves of heat from a furnace grate. The fire. The explosion. The crash. Involuntarily, his stomach spasmed again, trying to wring out the last ounce of bile.

“Rinse your mouth with this.” Clare bent over him, water brimming in her cupped hands. He slurped a mouthful, swished it around his mouth, and spit it out.

“More?” he managed to say. She reappeared with another handful of water. He gargled it into the back of his throat and spat again. She wiped the rest of the water on his face.

He sat back on his haunches. “Sorry.”

She was all practicality. “Take off your shirt. I’ll soak it in the stream. You’ll feel better.” Her matter-of-fact attitude helped him feel less embarrassed about tossing his lunch. He peeled off the stinking, sweat-soaked garment, and when she brought it back, he rubbed the sopping cloth over his face, neck, and hair before putting it on. It was shockingly cold for a moment, before his skin got accustomed to the clinging wet. The cool barrier against the heat attacking him everywhere helped him to breathe again. He sank back into the ferns. Clare sat beside him, cross-legged. She reached out and began stroking his forehead, pushing his wet hair back, her hand cool and firm. And her touch undid him, just undid him. He felt a knot in his chest loosen, and there he was, opened like a package. He closed his eyes.

“We were flying into the central highlands. It was hot, heavy VC activity in the area, and the artillery units were hammering the place night and day, laying down fire to clear out enough space for the slicks to land and for the squads to set up their perimeters. So we’re in the chopper, me and my friend Mac and a bunch of other guys and our lieutenant.” He opened his eyes, looking into the green leaves above him. “We were kind of goofing, getting ourselves revved up, ’cause we figured we were dropping straight into a firefight. All of a sudden, we get hit. The helicopter starts to drop. The pilot’s screaming, ‘Jump! Jump!’ and the chopper’s bucking like a bronco and we’re all hanging on for dear life. I could see out the door we weren’t too far above the trees. The lieutenant yells, ‘Come on,’ and me and Mac stand up, but the other three guys are yelling that there was no fucking way they were going to jump into the fucking jungle. The pilot’s still screaming, ‘Jump, jump,’ and I look at Mac and he kind of shrugs. The lieutenant sees it, and he slaps his pistol into my hand and yells, ‘Go for it,’ like he’s got to stay with the other guys, maybe persuade them off. Like he had more than a minute anyway. So we jumped. Mac and me.”

He glanced at Clare. She was sitting very still, not looking at him directly, looking just past him, as if the ferns were something she had never seen before. She nodded without taking her eyes off the ferns.