Page 9 of One of Them

I was a ruthless killer. An assassin for hire.

I walked the line between black and white with swaying steps, stuck somewhere in the gray area, growing cloudier with each day. As the sun set, the body count soon reached three digits.

There were lines I never dared to cross. Despite everything, I wasn’t a villain in my eyes. I ate, slept, fucked, and lived like any other human being.

The secrets of the blue backpack remained buried in a dusty, jammed-up drawer at the back of my mind, where they slept soundly.

I wanted to play the game. Who said I had to play bytheirrules?

The crossfire created a steady beat. Broken voices and screams of agony filled the air, burning into memory like a song my mind couldn’t shake.

I couldn’t tune out the noise, so I added my own. I roared, draining my lungs, until my voice cracked. When the adrenaline faded, my focus snapped back to the task.

Bullets flew from the machine gun, casings littering the ground. I glanced at the pile, wondering how many other halves had ended a life today.

Didn’t bother counting. Instinct took over. Reload, fire, repeat.

This unit worked on one setting: clear out. House after house, street after street. We cleared villages, securing them before moving on. The sun could set, darkness consuming the clouds, and we’d still be going.

I took a drag from the hand-rolled cigarette, letting the burn seep into my lungs, poison sliding down my throat. Pulling off my helmet, I ran myhand through the tangled mess of curls. A buzz cut wasn’t looking like such a bad idea now. Layers of filth coated me, the uniform sticking like a second skin. I itched to take it off but made no move.

Red-dirt-covered boots came into view at the bottom of the steps. I lifted my gaze to Orest, the last man from the alpha team besides me. He was the only one I knew by name.

The two of us had pushed through the first weeks, nights spent on the front porch of this wooden shed. The cheap finish had worn away where we sat. A jar of buds rested on the makeshift table. On good nights, we scored a bottle of vodka to pass the time.

He sat beside me, voicing the same question. “How far?”

I took a drag, calculating. “Sixteen miles.”

He nodded, turning toward the expanse. Together, we scanned the outskirts of camp. It wasn’t our turn to guard, but we did it anyway.

Orest twisted the cap off the bottle, gulping it down until tears gushed from his eyes. I watched him battle the burn in my peripheral vision, a chuckle forming in my throat. He was so damn young. If you didn’t know better, you’d mistake him for a pirate. And he sure behaved like one. No wonder we bonded.

Cloudless nights like tonight were the most peaceful, but silence had a way of creeping up on you. When everything quieted, the endless sounds of agony kept playing in your head. Voices whispering from all directions.

A natural state for me. I looked at my hands, seeing the blood they carried long before I stepped foot on this continent.

Out of all the traps you could land in, I knew it was the anticipation that really got to you if you let it. It corrupted your mind with ideas, with visions of what’s to come. But in this godforsaken land, the dust swallowed every useless prediction. Each day, it threw a new dust ball at you until you were coughing blood. It pushed you until you became one with the land.

I shook off the thoughts, accepting the alcohol Orest passed me.

This late into the mission, I lost count of how many bodies we shipped out. How many locals we buried. The more soldiers they sent, the more messages I typed out.

There came a time when we stopped using names, only referring to ourselves by numbers. A single file in the main office held the key to our identities, its edges smudged with dirty fingerprints.

All except for mine. I had no name. No home address. No point of contact.

Dawn was nearing when I stood up from the porch. Orest dozed off sometime after losing his third card game. He was a hell of a sore loser. A non-believer in my winning streak. His bruised chin rested against the bulletproof vest, and I flicked his nose like I did every morning.

The camp stirred awake, embracing another day. Soldiers awaited the drivers by the buggies loaded at the gate.

Every morning, we carved the same path of footprints, only for the wind to erase them by the time we returned. All of us locked in a dangerous guessing game, unsure which step would be our last.

“How far?” Orest asked again at the end of the day.

“Ten miles.”

I could already sense the next question when he lowered his head.

---