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Courage To Live
I narrowed my eyes. “Where were you?”
He flinched, abruptly, violently, as though he’d been shot. “Please,
don’t ask me that,” he whispered. “I can’t… I can’t talk about it now.
Please.”
Uneasy, I held his gaze for a long moment, chewing my lip,
mentally going over the eight months he’d been away. Questions
gathered and fizzed on my tongue, like bubbles in a soda can.
Waiting for answers, I knew, which would not be forthcoming.
“Please,” Hakim forced a smile, his eyes distant. His gaze went
over the top of my head, unseeing.
Thousand-mile stare
. “Don’t worry
about me. You just keep doing what you do.”
’
It was meant to be a preventative raid, part of an ongoing series of
campaigns to keep the rebels massing in the north from capturing
the city again, a preventative measure.
We parachuted in about half a kilometre outside the city,
plummeting through the densely packed leaves, before furling our
parachutes and setting off at a steady jog towards the outskirts of
the city. I followed my unit carefully, keeping quiet and to the
shadows, and Hakim fell in beside me. My partner was young, dark,
and dove-eyed, with corkscrewed hair, and a cigarette seemingly
permanently glued between his lips, moving unsteadily through the
undergrowth. Nervous.
Muffled grunts and curses exploded out of the town square
ahead and the almost non-existent light glinted off the muzzle of a
hand gun. As we neared the fighting, the smoke, melee of bodies,
chatter of machine guns, and sharp report of pistols made it difficult
to tell how many were ours, and how many were the enemy. Soon,
the streets were swarming with people, too many people, or so it
seemed.
First things first. The bullet flew true to the streetlamp, shattering
it and raining glass on the attackers below as the bulb flashed and
failed. Use the bench as a springboard to leap over their
blind shots, sinking a knife into a shoulder and ripping it free.
The scream this time was higher pitched, wild with shock.
Pure killing moves. Forget any notions of fair play or honour,
save for helping the person next to you, and fighting the urge to
leave the boy behind, because he was too slow. He could take out of
the bigger ones, while I could get the fast, little ones when they got
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