Dark Is The New Light

Dark Is The New Light

by

Stephen A. Carter

        By the time he stopped running his lungs were burning and his temples pounding, his chest so constricted it felt as if his rib cage would implode, crushing the life from his body.  His heart thudded at a machine gun rate, and his mouth was filled with cottony corroded copper.  His feet were shredded and his face, torso and legs were crisscrossed with cuts so numerous he was a solid sheen of red, appearing oily black in the dim moonlight.  Even his cock was torn, his scrotum punctured and seeping.

        Only his eyes had miraculously escaped damage from the thick vegetation through which he blindly pursued freedom.  Wide, white-rimmed blue orbs desperately scanned the darkness for an avenue, a path, an opening through which to continue.

        He was in a small clearing, the first he’d crossed since effecting his escape.  He wanted to bend, clutch his knees, and gather his breath but knew he had no time.  He looked up to get his bearings, dismay washing over him; only grayish darkness above, the stars masked by tropical cloud cover.

        They would be on him soon if he didn’t get moving, but he was well aware that continuing to stumble blindly through the jungle could kill him just as quickly as if he simply sat down and waited for them to find him.

        This was not the tame, wide-aisled jungles of Tarzan and Indiana Jones.  This was the Panamanian jungle, with some of the thickest vegetation in the world, filled with poisonous insects, spiders, snakes, and reptiles, and death could strike from any quarter.  He could only pray that one of the big cats had not caught his scent, was not silently stalking him.  Though death in that manner would be preferable to death from the hell pursuing him.

        He needed direction.

        He fought his instinct to run and closed his eyes, tuning his ears to the sounds of the forrest.  The “whoop” of the coral frog, the clicks and chirps of crickets and katydids, and the buzz and whirs of flying insects.  Holler monkeys roared like lions.  The scurry of a rodent, underbrush, off to his left.

        He slowed his breathing, his being coming sharply into focus.  He was cold.  Though the temperature had barely dipped below 75°, loss of blood was stealing his warmth.  He was being feasted on by mosquitos, bitten by chiggers.  He sensed every wound on his body; a jagged tear in his side, a flap of skin the size of a maple leaf lay folded against his hip.  He could hear the roar of his blood pulsing through his veins, smell the metallic aroma of his open wounds, and taste the fungal rot of the jungle floor.  He was hungry, thirsty, tired and weak.  Though well trained and in peak condition, his strength had been sapped.  He wondered at the fact that he was still on his feet.

        His neck hurt—  No, burned.  No.  Both.  A throbbing, burning, searing ache that seeped to his spinal chord and pulsed in his temples, overshadowing all other injuries.  Fear had never served him, and panic would never overtake him, but the nagging tickle of concern began to invade his thoughts and freeze his bowels.  If he let it fester it would consume his mind, milk all his precious time.

        He blocked it out to concentrate, to listen…  to hear—

        There!  To his right, forty-five degrees.  Distant, perhaps two klicks: Water.  A river.  An escape route.

        He plunged into the jungle toward the source of the sound, slashing his left shoulder on the spines of a black palm.  He ignored this newest assault, focusing on the goal.  Pain was irrelevant, only serving as a reminder that he was still alive.  Still one step ahead.

        He vowed that if he made it out he would visit his mother.  Spend time with her.  Perhaps convince her to join A.A.  She was a good, smart woman, but she was a drunk and that made her mean and stupid.  Whether she joined the program or not, he needed to see her, needed to tell her that he loved her.  It had been too long.

        He’d look up Kristina too.  Maybe she was still single and hadn’t popped out a litter of dirt munchers.  He could see her lopsided grin, hear her big laugh and smell her TRESemmé hair.  Maybe they’d get married, have some dirt munchers of their own.  They had shared a once-in-a-lifetime love forged in youth and purity, tempered in friendship and forbidden sex.  But he had run away like a scared little boy, afraid of commitment and routine and stagnation.  He chased adventure as a substitute for substance.

        Marine Staff Sergeant William (Billy) Pierce had joined the marines at seventeen.  He had learned how to fight, how to kill, how to die, but he had never learned how to live.  Now, he wanted to live.  He wanted to live a dull, normal life with his quirky wife with the lopsided grin and a house full of slobbering dirt munchers.  He wanted a boring job with a mortgaged ranch style home and a rusty pick-up.  He wanted a man cave with a 60” television to watch football with his asshole friends.  Maybe he’d get a dog.  A big, stupid dog that ate its own shit and knocked him down every time he came home because it was too dumb to realize he’d only been gone five minutes.  Maybe join a club, the Rotary, Kiwanis or the Elks, where they held annual fundraisers and had dinner dances where everyone complained about the rubbery chicken and overcooked rosemary potatoes.

        He wanted all that more than anything.  If he made it out alive he promised himself he would go home.  Back to the one place he swore he would never see again.  Because he knew now that nothing else mattered.  Life was too short and shit could go sideways before you could blink.

        And it had.  It had gone sideways so quickly.  He had been leading an incursion to ferret out smugglers who were running drugs and guns from Columbia into Panama, destined for the United States.  The squad of ten consisted of U.S. marines and Panamanian security forces.  Their mission was to halt the activity at the border, shutting it down permanently.  Now all of his men were dead and he had barely escaped with his life.

        Onward he plunged through the dense jungle.  It wasn’t fear that drove him, it was survival.  Someone had to live.  Someone had to remember.  But first he had to forget.  There would be inquiries, so he would tell a story about being ambushed by the smugglers.  They would believe that.  What they wouldn’t believe was the truth.  No one would.  So he would go home and forget.  Forget their capture, forget his imprisonment, forget the death and the blood and the screaming and the horror.  Until he was alone, in the middle of the night.  Then he would remember and hug his knees, and shake and cry because his soul burned with anguish.

        Now, there was no time for that.  He had no idea what time it was, but it had to be near dawn because he was seeing more clearly, able to avoid running into trees and tripping over roots.  He no longer felt the burn of his cuts, but the pain in his neck was reaching crescendo.  His temples pounded as if his head would explode, but on he ran.

        He was getting close; the roar of the river was loud.  He redoubled his speed, avoiding a tree—

        Then the bottom fell out.  One moment running on terra firma, then next he was plunging downward, pinwheeling his arms.  He fell forty feet, landing hard, his legs breaking the fall, the fall breaking his legs.  The left was a compound fracture, his thighbone punched through the skin.  He waited for the pain to come.  Waited for death.  Three feet from the river’s edge.  Ooo-Rah!

        The pain came, not from his legs, but from his neck, head, and spine.  Pain so severe it contorted his body in a backward arc, pulling his lips into a tight, rictal grimace, clawing his hands and bowing his feet.  He began to spasm, his head pounding the dirt.  Mercifully, he passed out.

        When he woke, he saw the stars.  Still dark, he could see as clearly as if it were day.  They were standing over him.  Six tall, white, angular men—  No, not men.  Something else.  Though their lips weren’t moving, he could hear their conversation:

        “He has turned.”

“He is meat.”

“No matter.  He has turned.”

        Then they were gone.  Disappearing into the shadows like smoky wraiths.

        He sat up.  No more pain.  No cuts, no headache, no bone sticking from his thigh.

        He rose to his feet, fixating on a single thought: He must get home.  He must see his mother.  Then visit Kristina.

        First, he must feed.

The End

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