Chapter 3-
Luis kept his eyes on the back of the cop's head.
The plexiglass divider might as well have been the front glass of an old Humvee for all the control he had today.
Back then, he'd just been waiting for the pop, IED, small arms, it really didn't matter. You waited for it, you braced for it, because there was no doing anything else. There wasn't anything else to focus on. Now at least it was obvious where the pop would come from. Hell, the plexiglass was probably cleaner, too.
Different times, different country even, but more the same than not. Even the heat was the same,
it's just wetter here.
And the feeling in the pit of his stomach hadn't changed at all. A small, tight knot that told him where he stood in the world.
'Learn to love the suck' a barking voice yelled in the back of his head.
His leg throbbed in time with the cruiser's rattle, the vinyl seat sticking to the sweat on his neck. The AC vents in the dash were pointed forward, cooling the cops instead of them, and every breath in the backseat felt solid. Like inhaling air left to bake in an oven. Beside him, Michael sat stiff, jaw locked, staring at nothing. Still too young to know how to hide the shake in his hands.
Luis shifted slightly, letting his elbow brush the kid's. "Don't take it on yourself," he said, low and steady. "You couldn't have stopped it."
Michael didn't answer, but there was the faintest twitch in his jaw a crack in that rigid mask. The kid was still replaying it, same as Luis, again and again. The scaffolding groaning, the scream cut short, Owen's eyes fixed on nothing. Luis had seen men go out like that before instant, eyes open, as if they might still be seeing something you couldn't.
Through the window, the city rolled by in smeared fragments,
a range of boarded up row houses,
a broken down, rust bitten fence,
street corners where men hunched in the shade like discarded furniture just to do anything to get out of the direct heat.
A few kids played in the gutter with a stripped bicycle frame, jumping through the middle piece in a rabid dance of hopscotch. foot in, foot over, foot off. still smiling while cars passed them by.
all while the hot vinyl was pressing into Luis's skin.
his eyes moved on instinct as adrenaline continued pumping it's way through his veins. doorways, rooftops, alley mouths. He tracked the angles of broken windows, the slant of fire escapes, the way shadows pooled in places. The habit wasn't something you shut off.
Their truck would still be at the jobsite, tools in the bed. Hopefully.
Nothing stays untouched for long.
His phone was gone, their wallets are gone. Even Michael's gloves, for some stupid reason no one bothered to explain. The cops had bagged everything and all without a word after Luis and Michael had been pushed into the car. Now they were just two names on a clipboard, locked in a rolling cage.
The cruiser hit a patch of rough pavement, jolting him backward in time.
Luis is sitting in a different seat, with a different smell, sand-baked canvas instead of old vinyl, but the same clamped in feeling. The same rattle of a heavy frame on uneven ground. He could almost taste the dust of Kandahar in his teeth.
It came with the weight of body armor digging into his collarbones, the stink of oil and powder clinging to everything.
His hand had rested on the stock of his rifle out of reflex, the way it had a thousand times before. There'd been a guy across from him. Hale. staff sergeant Hale. chewing sunflower seeds like he had nowhere better to be. Hale had gone down the hall once. He was different after, not that Luis had gotten much of a chance to speak to him then.
Back then, you would be shuffled into a med tent outside the wire. They'd bring you in after certain patrols. Quiet, no questions until after the swabs and needles. You didn't ask why. Honestly he didn't want to hear the answer. Men came out pale and tight-lipped, some with a paper slip clearing them, others got sent down a hall. Most of these didn't come back, and those who did seemed to rot from the inside out. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast.
Luis had gotten his clearance every time, but the waiting had been the worst part. Sitting on a cot under the white hum of overhead lights, hearing the occasional muffled shout from behind the canvas partitions. The kind of sound that made your jaw clench without you realizing it.
The memory kept going even when he tried to pull himself out of it, that's how these things work sometimes. The slap of rubber gloves, the clink of stainless trays, the look in a medic's eyes when they already knew something you didn't, the slumped shoulders of a guy walking past the outside of the curtain you just knew on sight how things had turned out for them.
The cruiser slowed for a stoplight, and the present came back in a thin shimmer through the glass. Michael was still watching the floor, locked inside his own head. Luis studied the kid's face. Looking closer at the blood smudge on his cheek that hadn't been wiped away, the grit along his hairline. Saw how he was breathing shallow, like it might make him invisible.
Luis wondered if he'd look the same. Pale, tight lipped, by the time they were done with him here.
He wanted to promise they'd both walk out,
but promises like that were only worth making when you could keep them. And Luis had already learned the hard way that sometimes the best you could do for someone was just sit next to them and keep your mouth shut while the road carried you somewhere you didn't want to go.
The road under them began to change, with rough gravel popping under the tires. a slight uphill pull. Luis noticed the camera perched over the intersection ahead, its black dome pivoting slow, lazy. tracking them. A guard in body armor leaned against the corner of a building, rifle slung but ready, eyes following the cruiser as it passed.
The police station came into focus down the street, not as much of a bunker as some of them appear to be. A few years ago this was probably just a restaurant or maybe a open market. Luis was old enough to remember the days before the shroud, but time marches on