Like dominoes, their heads fell to the dirty floor. There was no plan, no escape, just headless corpses, rolling heads, and the feeling of utter helplessness that froze Aberlour in place. Oliver ran out of the room, and the sound of his retching was a fitting soundtrack to the horror show etching itself onto Abe’s corneas.
Carlos’ eyes were still open, but the smile he always wore had long been washed away by pain and misery. Abe could see the fear in his eyes, even as grainy and terrible as the video quality was.
There were words. Curses, mutters, sobs, and a few screams of rage. Aberlour wanted to echo them, but nothing came out of him. There was nothing left of him. He was empty. Hollow. He’d never be happy again. He could feel it. Could swear it. Abe’s head was still attached, but he was dead, for all intents and purposes.
“I’m sorry, son.” There was a hand on his shoulder. Aberlour looked down at it, confused for a moment. He’d lost track of where he was, what was happening, the image on the screen haunted him.
Sorry. Their Major General was sorry.
“I had that shot,” Aberlour said, looking directly into the eyes of the man responsible for his friends being killed by the insurgents. Those beady little eyes. The eyes of a bug. He never should have listened to a single word out of his mouth.
“You don’t know that—this isn’t on you,” Baron said, shaking his head.
“No,” Abe agreed, his tongue sharp, his mind reeling. “It’s on you,” he spat out, hoping the words would never leave the man’s mind.
“Aberlour!” somebody said warningly.
“I had that shot. I never miss. I told you that, but you didn’t fucking listen, and now all of ‘em are dead, and that’s on you, sir,” he said without hesitation.
“Remember your place,” Major General Baron warned, the empathy he’d feigned suddenly vanishing.
“Fuck right off!” Abe barked, turning on his heels and storming out of the room without another word. There was a scuffle, like someone intended to stop him, but no one followed him out.
“I’ll never unsee that,” Oliver said, sounding out of breath and thousands of miles away. He was sitting in the hallway, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. He looked young. So damned young. Like the scared boy Aberlour had met on the bus to Parris Island.
Aberlour stumbled forward and slid down the wall until he sat next to Oliver, copying his position. He rested his head against his knees and listened to Oliver’s sobs as they filled the otherwise silent hallway.
Fuck.
FUCK!
Aberlour had never questioned his decision to become a Marine.
He questioned it now.
He questioned everything now.
Everything except one.
“I would have made that shot,” Aberlour said, to no one, for no reason, and not for the first time.
“Yeah,” Oliver replied, sounding defeated. “You would have—” the dead silence of the hallways spelling out what they couldn’t—that ifs and maybes were of no use to dead men.
It was too late for that now. Their friends were gone. Their friends were dead. There was nothing left of them but broken corpses that would never grace American soil again.
Chapter 27
Present day
May 2020
Scella was about to cut him off. He could tell from the disapproving expression on the young bartender’s face. He wasn’t even drunk, but since she’d just poured him his third glass of liquor, he was well on his way. Before she could officially cut him off, Aberlour gave her a smile, grabbed his fresh glass, and walked towards the back of the room to his usual spot.
He came here to throw darts. He liked to drink, too, of course, but it was mainly the opportunity for some quiet target practice that drew him to the place. No one bothered with the old board at the very back of the joint. It was discolored and broken, the numbers faded by time and use. The poorly balanced darts made throwing difficult for most people.
Not for Aberlour.
The reasons he came here were—complex. For one, it was the only place in town that felt familiar outside of his own home and the booth at the fair. For another, it was the only drinking establishment that didn’t make his PTSD flair up. The place was old, and whoever had bought the building had obviously paid it off back when owning a bar hadn’t been a multimillion-dollar investment. It was huge. Big enough that even at its busiest, he never even came close to touching other people. The board was in a little nook at the back, and when Aberlour faced it, his back was directly to a wall, so he didn’t need to constantly look over his shoulder to see if there was anything or anyone behind him.
