Page 9 of Home Town

Memories of that time hit him hard, causing a visceral reaction as his pulse sped and his stomach twisted. Hard enough he missed half of what Quinn was saying.

“—heading to a meeting. But it’s been great seeing you, man.”

“Yeah. You too,” Corey replied.

Quinn spun to stride away while Corey, a lot more slowly, braced his palms on the table and pushed himself up.

Once on his feet, he sidled carefully out from between the bench and the table, and then made his way to the exit.

He needed to find out when he was getting out of there. Not being cleared for active duty while stuck at a camp teeming with action wasn’t doing him any good, mentally.

Time to get out of this purgatory. Time to go home.

Chapter Five

The reality of being back at his unit’s base in Florida made Corey long for the seemingly endless days of waiting for transport in Djibouti.

That thought brought about a fresh wave of guilt. Make that a tsunami of guilt.

Survivor’s guilt.

The shrink at his mandatory mental health appointment had suggested it was normal, just before Corey denied having it. That wasn’t even totally a lie. The main source of his guilt wasn’t that he’d survived when others hadn’t. At least it wasn’t mainly that.

The main reason for his guilt was that he’d simply had enough. With all of it.

Enough with the briefings and repeated recounting of his version of the events.

Enough with the questions from everyone.

It seemed as if every single person he came in contact with wanted to discuss the attack, ad nauseam. Military. Civilian. Peers. Command.

Like Monday morning quarterbacks, those who weren’t anywhere near the region discussed and analyzed and second-guessed the events and decisions of those who had been there. While all Corey wanted to do was tell every one of them to shut the hell up.

He’d had it. He was done with the never-ending postmortem of the attack. He wanted to move on but how could he here where so many had been affected?

Worse, and the most guilt-inducing of all, was that he’d had enough of dealing with all the death.

He’d donned his dress uniform again that morning. It was the fifth time in as many days. He’d attend today’s funeral knowing there were five more left. One later that afternoon as families were forced to double up on some days to get the services all in.

He fought the thought running through his head.

The thought that he’d rather be anywhere doing anything else than attend one more funeral. Rather than stand, stoic and stone faced, as the deceased’s family fell apart in front of yet another identical coffin.

Some were crewmen he knew from the Eisenhower, at least by name or sight. Some he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. He attended anyway as they all blurred into a rote routine of sameness.

All of them except for Rabbit’s funeral.

He had been one of the many flown to Germany. And Rabbit was one of his shipmate’s who hadn’t made it. Corey had learned that when he’d landed in Florida.

Rabbit’s funeral was scheduled to be the last of all the services, happening just hours before Corey’s flight home, but it was going to be the hardest.

Always cheerful, always upbeat, Rabbit had been the best of them. Always there with a smile, no matter what, but now he was gone. And no amount of rehashing the attack was going to change that.

He dreaded the day of that final funeral as much as he anticipated it for being the end of this torturously long line-up of final goodbyes.

A knock on his barrack’s room door brought Corey back to the present.

He reached for the knob and yanked open the door to find Jones standing there wearing, like Corey, his dress uniform for the funeral.

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