The Farther Shore by Matthew Eck (books for students to read TXT) 📕

replaced by a sensation of light and power. I leaned further forward, smiling.

TWO

THE CITY PACED PAST DAWN LIKE A WATCHFUL DOG, never returning to sleep. The bombing had stopped hours ago. We’d made our last radio check somewhere just after midnight, and now we were all wondering whether the Army would ever miss us.

“They should be here by now,” Fizer said.

As the sky filled with soft light we moved up toward the press box. Climbing the concrete steps, I had the sense that this day would be different, and I tried to understand what I had learned the night before. I felt as if I had been tempered somehow, as if I would now see everything differently.

The door to the press box was gone and the room had been gutted. The windows were smashed and broken glass crunched beneath our boots. Sections of the window frame hung loose in the opening, and pieces of glass jutted out here and there. Looking out over the field and the stands, I felt like a man at the controls of a machine that had broken down. I remembered hearing in a briefing that they’d once held the Goodwill Games here. Whether it was true or not, the notion held me for a moment, the gathering of nations, the attempt at peace and camaraderie. All the flags displayed, crisp and colorful in the wind.

The track and the soccer field below were in miserable condition. Football, I thought, they must have called it football. But then between the warlords, the desert, and an approaching army, the groundskeeper didn’t have the most desirable job. It was probably hard enough to get grass to grow in this place. The field had no shade, and so the grass had been burnt away. The dirt was yellow. I imagined the UN staging a match for the city, Italy versus Germany, or America versus some much smaller country. They’d pass the ball around and between us. They’d kill us in all that open space.

“Where are they?” Heath asked, dropping his rucksack to the floor. He let out a loud sigh as he settled down to sit on it. He scratched at the red stubble that had grown since we arrived in the city.

I thought about the boys, dead in the hallway. Someone would have found them by now. They were no longer among the missing.

“Maybe they’re waiting for more light,” Fizer said, turning to Santiago for confirmation.

Santiago nodded. “Probably. They know we’re here. They know where to find us.”

Except for Santiago, we all dropped our rucksacks on the floor and used them as seats to avoid the glass. Santiago leaned over, looking out the broken window. Against the backdrop of sky and the shattered window, he looked too weak to be leading us. He looked altogether ordinary, not like a leader who inspired confidence. He finally put his rucksack on the floor. His back was wet with sweat and white patches of salt stained his uniform.

“Jesus Christ,” Cooper whispered, a prayer forming on his lips, as if he’d just grasped what really happened in that building. Softly he whispered, rocking back and forth with his hands folded together and his head bowed.

I turned to look out the window again, but Santiago was watching me. There was something frightening in his eyes. It was the recognition of something that he wasn’t about to share with the rest of us.

After looking at me for a long time, he said, “What do you think?”

“Sit here for a while,” I said. “We shouldn’t move around much during the day.” I looked at the floor and the broken glass. “You sure no one followed us?”

“We’ll take our time,” he replied, “but we do need to figure something out. Just in case they haven’t dispatched any helicopters for us, or in case something happened to them.”

“Why wouldn’t they dispatch the helicopters?” I asked. “They haven’t heard from us in hours, and they know this is the extraction point if anything goes wrong.”

No one was talking or even looking at anyone else. I wondered if they were thinking that there was no way to go it alone if the Army didn’t come for us. Or maybe they were thinking that the only way to get out alive was to go it alone.

I sat in the corner, leaning forward on my M-16. The hand guards were cool against my cheek. A morning breeze blew into the booth, and I felt myself drifting off. For a few minutes each day, just as dawn broke, the earth cooled briefly before giving itself back over to the desperate heat.

Santiago called for an ammunition and food check. Each of us still had at least seven full magazines of M-16 ammunition. Fizer had four belts of SAW ammo. Cooper, Santiago, Zeller, and I each had two MREs left. Heath had one, but Fizer didn’t have any because he’d eaten all three of his on the rooftop.

“Think the clans are looking for us?” Cooper asked.

“Two dead kids,” Santiago replied, “they’ll be looking for somebody.”

“We left enough trash and brass behind that they’ll figure it out,” I said. “They’ll know we’re U.S. Army.”

Santiago looked at me, “You don’t think we got all the trash?”

“No way to be sure,” I said. “I guess we could dig through our stuff and get a rough idea.” I was thinking about the MRE I’d been eating in the stairwell. I had no idea what happened to it. Our safety and our good names, not to mention the integrity of the entire mission, could hinge on the importance of a few bits of trash.

“I’m not worried about the casings,” he said. “That could be anybody. But if we left any trash behind we’re in a world of hurt.”

“Why?” Fizer asked.

“Our intentions were good,” said Cooper.

“Maybe they won’t figure it out,” added Heath. “Maybe they won’t even find the kids, maybe they were just reacting to the gunfire.”

“They’ll find them,” I said. “They always do.” Nobody