“Whatever happens, you’ll get through this,” Iris encouraged, as gentle as she ever got. “And we’ll be here for you. Let’s do what we can to avoid more loved ones getting shot.”
At last I nodded, and somehow my legs resumed walking. Not where I wanted to go, but where he needed me to be.
It wasn’t very long before our enemies could be sighted in the woods on the other side of the creek. Given the direction they’d chosen in order to sneak by our defenses, they couldn’t get any closer without crossing the drainage basins to the south or east, unless they detoured a long way west, which would give us ample opportunity to pick them off. There wasn’t a lot less cover in the lowlands than there was anywhere else, but they’d be slowed by the soggy ground and by the climb down and out of the creek bed. Our higher ground gave us the opportunity to flood our opponents with firepower while they crossed the thousand meters between us.
Which is what we did when they charged. LSDF had automatic rifles — those are still abundantly available, though most were manufactured over a century ago — but the backwoods route they’d taken hadn’t allowed them to bring any vehicles, if their arsenal even included any. They had nothing to match the heavy machine guns and mortars the two infantry companies were raining down on them.
Fort Laurel had also been without such defenses until last year. In prior eras, paramilitary groups could obtain military-grade weapons on the black market. Once humanity exhausted our planet’s fountain of hydrocarbon fuels and overseas shipping became as impractical as it was during the Renaissance, the U.S. Department of Defense gained much tighter control over the supply of advanced weaponry. The government, and the federal contractors they made rich, could still coordinate the complex chain from mining to component fabrication to final assembly, whereas militias like LSDF could not. I was more grateful than ever for Third Battalion, even at only half capacity. Their other units would already have been notified of this unprovoked invasion — exactly the sort of violence they were in the South to prevent. Likely LSDF’s stronghold in East Texas would be hearing from Fort Worth in the coming weeks.
It’s basic warfighting doctrine that attacking a fixed position is much more costly than defending one. While our enemies had surprise, momentum, and bloodlust on their side, we had discipline, superior weaponry, and homefield advantage on ours. They kept control of their people and land through violence, indoctrination, and religious fervor. We chose to maintain order through cooperative agreements and quality leadership. Due to the government’s withdraw from the continent’s interior in the prior century, LSDF probably hadn’t gone up against a professional army since before any of their fighters were born. They’d brought hundreds, but it wasn’t enough.
By nightfall, what was left of their forces had retreated beyond the opposite bank. Our reinforcements from the north and east were well on their way, so unless the invaders had several reserve companies stashed below Goldonna, they were no longer an immediate threat to Fort Laurel. Which meant I could at last run to the forward medical station and find my husband. There hadn’t been time or radio bandwidth for me to get any updates during the fighting.
Wounded fighters in and out of unform were huddled around the floodlit entrance to the canvas tent, lying on blankets or leaning against tree trunks. The body bags were kept out of sight in accordance with standard operating procedures, but I knew they must be near. I pleaded with every deity I’d ever heard of that none contained the man I loved.
“Avery Chase,” I demanded of the first person in scrubs I encountered, who was helping lift a bandage-wrapped service member onto a litter.
The medic glanced up and recognized me, though I didn’t know him. “Sent him to the fort a couple hours ago, Major. Presented with stage three hypovolemic shock.” Dread saturated my gut while he strapped in his patient with practiced motions and kept speaking in technical language I understood all too well. “We performed an abbreviated laparotomy to control hemorrhage and contamination from the bowels. Abdomen was left open and resuscitation initiated, but BP and temperature worsened. Had to transfer him since blood products here are limited.”
The man nodded toward two volunteers standing by, who grabbed the litter’s handles on either side and carried it away. Then he focused on me, his tone growing more grave. “I wish I had better news for you, sir, but the situation was critical when he left.” There was another brief, pitying pause. “He’s strong. We did everything we could to give him a fighting chance.”
Horrifying visions played over my unseeing gaze: Avery’s heart beating much too fast, frantically attempting to compensate for insufficient blood. His extremities cooling as his body tried desperately to maintain enough circulation to keep his brain and lungs functional. His sliced belly packed with gauze, nothing protecting his organs except plastic dressing. IV bags swinging above his head while his litter was carried the additional kilometer from here to the fort.
The odds of him making it that far, before his remaining blood lost the ability to clot and started leaking from every exposed surface, were terrifyingly slim. There was no ambulance, no medevac chopper, that could be sent for him. No ICU to send him to. No blood bank to donate extra units. Just him jostling through these woods on a thin bridge of fabric: gasping for breath, too cold to shiver, his cells starved for oxygen. Lactic acid building up in his tissues as they shifted into emergency metabolic mode, until his entire circulatory system– the moment-by-moment process of staying alive — collapsed under the strain of the bullet’s trauma.
report His heart would stop. His chest would still. His skin would lose its warmth.
His eyes forever closed; his corpse completely silent as they carried him the rest of the way to the fort.
The tether of his spirit cut, leaving behind nothing but the empty shell of his body. The light of his life extinguished, and with it mine also. Because without Avery, I would be as dark as Arctic wilderness in December.
My sun would never rise. My winter would never thaw. I would roam untracked glaciers in the blackness until my blood froze and my heart, like his, gave out. And my last thought would be a prayer that we might be reborn and reunited.
“Major, please,” the medic’s voice registered distantly through my desolate inner landscape. “Have a seat — you look like you’re about to collapse.”
I didn’t grasp what he meant until my knees buckled and the ground rushed to meet me. Everything was taking a long time to make sense: the pine needles under my palms; the other man kneeling beside me and pressing a thumb into my wrist; the vomit suddenly hurtling its way up my esophagus and retching onto the forest floor.
The medic’s fingers checked my forehead and then my neck, feeling far hotter than they should against my blood-drained flesh. “Were you injured, sir?” he asked urgently while I bent over my own sick without really noticing it, too weak to lift my head.