Mind Mines (Recovery Part 3)

I awoke to crunching and shuffling and whispers.

Apparently I had indeed slept, at least momentarily, and now there was an invading force of mysterious shadowy figures descending on me. I could hear their speech and it was foreign, an alien tongue. Spirits of the dead.

I grabbed the radio out of fear and forced my exhausted body to a state of semi-alertness. That's when I saw them - not ghosts, soldiers. They were checking the cave. They had followed me.

Unarmed aside from a combat knife, I felt panic filter out through my palms. If they took me hostage I would face unspeakable torture; it might be better to rush them and take as many bullets as I could collect in my chest, and live as a ghost in this place. This choice seemed all but inevitable when I noticed the moon peeking through rifts in the rock behind me - a hint from the sky that, should I desire it, there was a chance of clawing myself to escape.

The soldiers' sudden laughter signaled a strong suggestion that they were not in fact hunting me, and without thinking I silently adopted darkness as my treadstone and did my best to become part of it. Without difficulty save for the stress screaming silently in my ears, I found my way out of the cave and again onto the marshy carpet of a hot rainforest floor, liberated from the marauders and free to suffer the standard torments again.

A journey commenced, a wandering, wavering trail I made up as I went along, each step padding over nameless grasses and thick mud, the whole voyage illustrated by a persistent inner poison. Over a decade of effort had built that base, framing it through slow time with personality, pleasure, and power. As individuals we invested our selves to maximum; as a team we created an identity. An identity we could be proud of. An identity we loved. The enemy had tried to storm that perimeter at least dozen times, and just as many times as they tried, we had driven them off.

And now that the base was overrun with hordes of intruders and our innermost chambers of solace had been torched and left to fall into ashen ruin, where were all my friends? Most were dead, and the rest had scattered. When the invasion began, and the first of the enemy had broken through the wire, I had climbed over dead patriots to man the .50. And it wasn't until I had taken out two dozen of them that I realized I was the only one still fighting for our side. Every one of my squadmates had fled long prior.

What had I invested in? What had I been believing in all that time? Were they just there because we had nice bunks and hot food? Were they planning on running away the second things weren't comfortable? What was wrong with me to commit to that belching beast of a weapon, tearing hideously through infantry after infantry, while the rest of my own soldiers succumbed to selfishness? Whose side carried more reason to be proud? For over a decade I had held that post, constantly training myself for the day I would need to rise to the challenge of defense. And for what? Everybody else ran away the instant things got tough.

This venom poisoned my heart with slow efficacy as I squinted against the wet leaves and tried to control basic breathing, helpless to avoid any snakes and spiders and mines that lay in this jungle. Every thing out here was actively trying to kill me.

One good thing about this place was that the thickets muffled almost all sound, so it wasn't long before I felt safe trying the radio, desperate for a distraction. "Rooster? Are you there? This is Otimbeaux. Come in, over."

But there was no response.

I tried again.

Nothing.

Only the screams of mental madness were left to keep my company as I lived each second expecting to be killed. Being this alone, this far from anything familiar - this was the birthplace of insanity.