States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

seat at the battle for Fallujah, an ancient city west of Baghdad, whose residents don’t much care for Saddam Hussein and his secular ways, but like occupation by us infidels even less.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jones says. “Garcia, got some hot hoochie mamma in a burqa waiting for your sorry ass back on base?”

“His standing appointment with the lovely, but equally untouchable, ladies of internet porn more like it,” I say, a comment which causes Jones to swerve and almost hit a goat.

Like he does on every patrol, Corporal Allen, the gunner, is on the Humvee’s roof, belting out “Gangsta’s Paradise” and drumming on the M2 .50 caliber machine gun. Muleskinner Squadron’s regular mission is reconnaissance, hunting bad actors and providing logistical support to the 3rdwhile trying not to get killed in the process, but today our mission’s more festive—we’re picking up crates of Easter decorations from the airstrip.

Garcia throws his arms up. “Man, this ain’t no Sunday drive, okay? Faster, dammit!”

“If either of you two grunts wanna drive—”

A roar from under the Humvee.

Searing heat rising through the floorboards.

Everything goes black.

Clods of dirt fill my mouth and nostrils.

The putrid smell of rotten eggs mixed with the metallic scent of blood.

Something batting me in the face.

I rub my eyes.

“Shit!”

Allen’s body, dangling upside down in front of me, a limp, bloody rag doll, suspended into the cabin by his ankles which are snagged in the morass of mangled metal that was the roof.

I dive forward. “You guys okay?”

Jones is slumped over the steering wheel, head twisted sideways, a gaping maw where his mouth used to be.

“No! No!” It’s as if my screams are someone else’s in the silent vacuum.

Garcia’s upright in the passenger seat. “Thank God!”

But his arms. Where are Garcia’s arms?

Move legs, dammit! Move! Why can’t I move?

Ringing in my ears so loud.

I clutch my head with both hands to stop the pain.

Flames licking through the air-conditioning vents.

Upright.

One leg buckles.

I collapse.

Red seeping through my left pant leg. Tacky to the touch.

The smell of blood.

Dragging the injured leg, I crawl to the side door and pull up on the latch. Nothing.

I remember bodies falling from windows, arms spiraling like windmills. Mushroom cloud of smoke.

I’m not supposed to die here! Not like they did!

I crawl forward on my belly and lever myself up enough to yank Jones’s body back off the steering wheel. I hoist myself onto the center console between Jones and Garcia. Using my right leg, I kick at the driver’s side door, the force sending me sprawling backward, into Garcia’s body which folds forward like an abandoned marionette, a seething crimson divot where his ear used to be.

I draw my palm over Garcia’s eyes, fixed and black like bullseyes, and shove his body into the footwell to make room to kick the passenger side door open.

It too, holds tight.

Keep your wits about you, Grace! Keep your wits about you!

I lose my balance again and topple into the back seat. Back where I started.

The pain in my leg’s infernal, consuming me from the inside out.

Up front, flames licking through the vents like tongues, ignite Jones’s fatigues.

I drag myself to the far back, beside overflowing cartons of candy bunnies and eggs nestled in shredded paper grass the color of green food coloring. I curl into a ball. Silence so complete it hurts. Nothing moving, as if the bomb sucked out all the air, leaving only death in its wake.

The fire will devour us all.

I close my eyes and the scene replays in slow motion, the way it will play in perpetuity, whether I live or die.

Boom!

Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat—machine gun fire hitting the metal plating Jones and Garcia had jerry-rigged on the Humvee.

The rending of metal.

Shattered glass floating like confetti.

I pull my sidearm from its holster.

I will not be taken alive.

I force my eyes open.

I will not die a coward.

I take one last look around at the smoking carnage, the demise of best intentions and even better men. The waste of it all drives me to rest my finger on the cold trigger.

I’m being dragged, powerful hands under armpits.

Unfamiliar voices.

Radios squawking.

“One extracted. Specialist Locke. Left leg’s hamburger.”

Gusts of super-heated air, a blast furnace.

Another voice. “Let’s get her in the bird fast. She’s alive. Hillbilly armor saved her. ’Bout time the brass up-armored these tin cans.”

“Nothin’ woulda saved the others. IED enema right up their asses.”

“Tourniquet!”

“Tighter.”

Thwump, thwump, thwump, thwump.

***

Complete darkness. My face compressed against glass. Fists banging, clawing. Brain on fire.

Where am I? Where are Jones and Garcia?

Metal banging.

A rush of damp air.

An old man, back-lit with something long and black pointed at me.

“Get away from me!”

“Jesus, you okay? Did you have another one of your dreams?”

I get on my belly and crawl.

“It’s me, Gracie. Vinnie.”

I freeze. The voice is familiar, soothing. Hand rubbing my arm.

“Vin?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. It’s me.”

Hand reaching. “You okay to stand? Looks like you’re still wearing Oscar.”

Oscar, hanging half-off like a doll’s broken limb. “What happened?”

“You had one of your bad dreams. I heard you screaming, all the way down in my place.”

“What?”

He points at the banging noise coming from the window. “I’m sorry, I need to get to fixing those rusted-out tracks. A couple of the shutters are loose, and the storm was blowing them against the window.”

“The storm?”

“Ophelia, remember?” he says.

I fumble to reattach Oscar. Together we hobble outside to look at the ocean. To breathe in the salt air. I lean on the railing and stare out at wave after wave battering the shore. Palm fronds skittering across A1A. Torrential rain like liquid silver lashes.

“Jesus, kid, let’s get you back inside, you’re shivering.” He lights a path with a flashlight. “Power’s out. Probably will be ’til this thing passes. Too dangerous to send crews out in this.”

I take his hand and shuffle to the futon.

“You don’t look so good. Why don’t you sit?” He drapes a blanket over my shoulders. “Them rickety old shutters clatter like a freight train, don’t they?”

I pull the blanket tight around me. “Or a helicopter.”

He sits beside me. “Ah, I see. War’ll do that to ya.”

I