Fireteam Delta by J. Halpin (ebook reader that looks like a book txt) 📕

chief sit there in the sand, breathing, bleeding, as their boat pulled away, turning into the sea.

Chapter 32: Dreaming

Summers sat beside his father in the passenger seat of an ice cream truck. The man had seen the truck broken down on the side of the road, and after a few minutes of looking over the engine, he’d decided that this was a good learning experience.

“Don’t you need gloves for that sort of thing?” Summers watched as a spark shot out, eliciting a curse from his old man.

“Don’t worry about me. Just keep watch.”

Summers hesitated before turning back to the dark streets outside.

“You should take me home soon.”

His father turned to him. “Why?”

“Because you said I’d be home today. Mom needs to eat dinner.”

“You’re what, ten now?”

“Eleven,” Summers corrected.

“Eleven. Christ kid, you should be enjoying life a little more. Don’t let your mom’s bullshit keep you from being happy. She’ll be fine for one more night.”

Summers watched as his dad reached back, pulling a bag of frozen popsicles from the back.

“There.” His father set the bag in his lap. “If you want, we can stop by your little friend’s and dump the rest of them. They’d just go bad when I scrap this, anyway.”

Summers immediately brightened.

“Aw man, that’d be awesome. We can just give it away, like Robin Hood?”

“Just like Robin Hood, yeah,” his father agreed, placing a hand on Summers’ head.

After another minute of work, the engine started to turn over, and the truck came to life.

His father sat back up, groaning.

“About fucking time.” He smiled. “Now, let’s see about getting you home.”

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Summers awoke, sitting upright in his bed aboard the ship. He moved so fast he nearly slammed his head into the ceiling before he caught himself.

“You know you talk in your sleep?” Cortez chided him from the hammock below.

“Mhmm,” he responded, reaching for the journal at his side.

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” Nowak observed from the floor of their small room.

“Yeah,” Summers answered, only half paying attention. After a minute, he stopped, a look of frustration on his face.

After another moment, he gave up, putting down the journal and lying back into the hammock once more.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Summers started. “Or . . . I don’t know. I keep having these vivid dreams.” Summers tapped the charcoal against his journal. “Or maybe more like memories.”

“Like they’re memories, or they are memories?”

“I don’t know,” Summers repeated. “I decided to write them down, to see if there’s a pattern or something.”

He turned the book over to Nowak. The man looked at it tentatively for a moment before taking it and reading the last page.

“This is way too coherent for a dream.”

“I know. But I don’t remember anything about them. And they weren’t as . . . they didn’t make sense before. They were just snippets of things.”

“Like what?” Nowak looked at him, confused.

“There was a guy with us. A kid, here in this world,” Summers explained.

Nowak stared at Summers a long moment before he spoke. “What else did you remember?”

He saw Cortez eye him, as well.

“Just something about Bambi . . .”

“Show me the page.” Nowak gestured to the book.

“What?”

“Did you write it down, this thing with the kid?”

“Yeah.” Summers took the journal for a second before handing it back.

Nowak read, then reread the page he’d given him. He looked back up to Summers.

“Do you know who Adams is?”

“Should I?”

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Summers wrote as fast as he could, trying to fill the journal with as much information as possible.

“Should we write about ourselves?” Cortez asked. She and Nowak flanked him from the side.

They’d tested Summers on the few things they’d known about him. Other than Adams, he hadn’t forgotten much else, which wasn’t saying a lot. He’d always been a private person, and now, that was biting him in the ass.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Summers answered.

Synel leaned down beside him. She’d shown up a few hours ago, along with Asle, curious about his writing. They both stared at him with worried expressions.

“This might be a strange question, but do you know how much you’ve forgotten?” Synel prompted.

She spoke with obvious anxiety in her voice. Asle looked on from her side.

“No. But maybe this means it’s getting worse.”

He put the book down for a moment, taking a long breath.

“You know, it kind of reminds me of something,” Cortez offered. “Like after an explosion—when you have that ringing in your ears. It’s supposed to be the ear cells dying. And once it’s gone, you’ll never hear that frequency again.”

Cortez looked to Summers. “Could be the same thing. The memory plays one last time before it’s erased.”

That sent a chill through Summers. If she was right, everything he’d dreamt since his time in the city had been something he’d lost.

“Great,” Summers declared. “Guess I’ll just stop sleeping for a while.”

“You know that’s not going to work,” Nowak replied.

“I know.”

Synel moved to put a hand on Summers’ shoulder, then winced in pain herself. Summers looked at her, worried.

Nowak considered Summers a moment longer before he turned to Synel, speaking in Nos.

“How are the . . .” He forgot the word, pointing to his side instead, the same that Synel had been injured on. “Stitches?”

“Painful, but it’s doing better.” Synel bowed a head to Nowak. “I’ve had worse,” she added, looking at Summers.

“Thanks, by the way, Sarge,” Summers muttered.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve gotten depressingly good at sutures since we got here . . .”

Summers turned back to Synel.

“How long before we get to the next town?”

The last few villages they’d passed were either abandoned or burned to the ground, likely casualties of the approaching