Man

For Angel Greer

Radmer never handled a body before. As a sniper he had killed his share of people, mostly men, but a few women and one child who had a bomb. Also, comically, a cow, a horse, and a camel, each on separate missions. He killed the cow to create a distraction, the horse was in the way of his target, and he shot the camel so it would fall on his target. That was his favorite kill – it was like a Looney Toons cartoon. But he never handled a body. He simply killed, confirmed the kill, and walked or drove away.

Bodies were someone else’s business, not his. But this body belonged to Firash, his friend. The friend he shot through the head because moments before, his friend Firash had also been a wolf, and he wanted to die. It was one of the few times Radmer felt bad about killing someone.

Now Firash’s body lay in the back of Radmer’s Jeep, wrapped in the same blanket Radmer used when helping Firash guard his flock. Overall, between the guilt and the toting around, Radmer much preferred dropping his targets and walking away.

As he drove he mulled over what to do. Just leaving the body wrapped up on his family’s doorstep was disrespectful. At the same time, he couldn’t tell them or the police he’d killed Firash, or the reason he was dead. So he needed a cover story. Afghanistan had been a war zone for decades. Firash was shot. That made things fairly simple.

But why was he shot at an oasis? Why was he shot at all? Why did Radmer find him there? Those were questions he couldn’t answer.

Radmer stopped the Jeep. Cover stories weren’t his business any more than handling bodies. He had made a career out of finding and killing people in the military and then privately. Everything else was bullshit.

He turned the Jeep around, kicking up clouds of pebbles and dust, and headed back for the oasis. After being up all night, he longed for a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich, but he settled for another drag on his cigarette and a gulp of bottled water.

He thought about weighting down Firash’s body with rocks and dumping him in the pond that was the heart of the oasis, but he remembered swimming in it and locals and animals drinking from it and decided not to risk spoiling the water. So he decided to dig.

After a half hour he stopped. Though it was early morning and the ground was loose and sandy, the heat of the day made digging unpleasant long before the hole was deep enough to be a grave. Brushing the sweat from his face and the dust from his hands, he looked at the bundled body and said, “Well Firash, looks like you’re getting a cairn.”

He laid the body near the water and started covering it in stones he gathered from around the oasis, some from in the pond. After two hours the body was covered and Radmer was soaked in sweat. He stripped and cooled off in the pond for a bit, dunking his head under the water many times, scrubbing at the wounds on his scalp and neck. The water made his wounds feel cooler but the still burned. He wasn’t sure if it was from infection, inflammation, or just the sun.

Climbing out, he got dressed, dipped his bandana in the cool water, tied it around his head, then dipped his cap and put it on over the bandanna. He sat down beneath the same date palm Firash was sitting under, alive, just a few hours earlier. Looking down, he saw spatters of blood and brain still on the ground nearby. Radmer didn’t mind. Somehow it made him feel closer to his friend than burying him did, or sharing coffee with him every morning for the past two weeks, and at Starbucks on other mornings over the past year. He felt closer to Firash now than he had to anyone since his time in the Army, almost like they were blood brothers. Maybe they were.

He had a cigarette and more bottled water, then went to the Jeep to scrounge for food. He always had at least some power bars in his pack in the front seat, and in the back he even had some MREs he picked up in case he was kept out on a job. He didn’t like to admit it, but having them on hand made him feel like he was still a proper soldier.

He was ravenous, but stuck with a power bar for now. It was rare that he found himself with free time, or that he didn’t know what to do, but at the moment both appeared to be true.

He had been scratched and bitten by a werewolf and if that meant he would now become a wolf as well, what difference did it really make? He was already effectively a loner, a nomad, and a killer with well over 200 confirmed dead to his name and 150 suspected kills beyond that. That didn’t place him on the all-time list of great snipers, but it was nothing to sneeze at.

Firash loved his dogs and his family. His family needed the flock, but as a wolf he was killing the dogs he loved and the sheep he needed. He could conceivably kill his wife or one of his sons. So he chose to die rather than be a liability. Radmer had none of those things. He had been killing people in Afghanistan for more than a decade, and in Iraq before that. If he killed a few people at random each month, what was it to him?

He leaned against the tree and closed his eyes for a bit, though the sun glowed red through his eyelids. He thought he could smell Firash getting ripe in the heat, despite the blanket shrouding him and the rocks covering him. Was it too soon for that? In this heat and blazing sun, maybe not. The palms of his hands itched but the back of his neck felt better. His head still throbbed.

The Corps. The Army. His guys. They were like his family then, and though estranged, they still were now If he became a wolf some night and tore up some poor guy in the infantry just out there doing his job, Radmer would feel terrible. He had long said if he was deployed in country until he killed everything that walked or crawled it would suit him just fine, but he mourned every last casualty on the Coalition side. Each time he heard of an American killed he made a mental note of one more he would have to take away on the other side to even the score. Not that he had anything against Afghanis or Iraqis. It was jus a matter of Us vs. Them. Once he was told who Them was, he was ready to kill every last one of them, because that was really the only way to get the job done.\

He dozed for a while, waking to the sound of scratching. He opened his eyes a tiny bit to still appear asleep. He could definitely smell Firash now. The smell of gas and meat mingled with another smell, one from last night. One that made him think of the brick oven at the pizza place he worked at as a kid. The smell of his arm as he turned the pizzas and pull them from the oven. The smell of hot hair and skin.

He opened his eyes all the way and saw a wolf – one of the small brown desert ones – sniffing at Firash’s cairn. They travelled in packs, but there was only one. Was it perhaps some kind of a scout? Radmer’s pistol was within easy reach on his right hip, but he didn’t draw it. The wolf was no threat, and Firash was a friend, but he was also meat. He guessed the wolf would rather have something fresher it didn’t have to dig for.

The wolf tentatively pawed at the rocks of the cairn, dislodging a few small ones. Radmer scratched a boot in the dirt to make a noise, and the wolf froze and looked at him.

“Fuck off,” Radmer said quietly. He was tired and his throat was parched dry. He coughed, swallowed, and yelled, “GO!”

The wolf bolted away from the cairn and out of sight. Radmer stood, scratched, and looked at his watch. Shit, it was 12:30. He’d dozed half the day away. He felt better, though. He dipped his cap and bandana in the water again and put then MRE.m back on. He felt pretty good, actually. Just hungry and dehydrated. Not just hungry. Ravenous. He hadn’t eaten anything significant for about two days, which wasn’t unusual, but he felt like with a bit of salt and pepper, maybe some ketchup, he could eat his Jeep.

Since he was already at a watering hole he lpted to save his remaining bottled water and just fill his canteen and add some purification tabs to prevent dysentery. Too hungry for just a power bar, he decided to crack open a MRE. He never looked at what the meal supposedly was, liking the randomness. He also liked seeing if he knew what it was he was eating without checking the label. This time he got lucky: Beef stew, applesauce, and pudding – either rice or tapioca. That part he couldn’t tell.

Fuck it. The MRE wouldn’t do. And there was no use wasting a day mulling by a pond in the desert. He packed his gear back in the Jeep and headed back to his apartment for proper food and a shower.

As much as he wanted a long, cold shower with real soap, he cut it short in favor of food. He started with 3 fried eggs sunny side up with six pieces of bacon and white toast slathered in butter and jelly. His stomach grumbled and growled as the food came to rest on top of the MRE already in his belly, but still he wanted more. Not hunger in the belly so much as emptiness he felt in his mouth and a craving he felt in his brain, behind his eyes.

He wanted to tear meat with his teeth and feel it in his hand. Flesh hanging on bone. Chicken – baked, not fried – or better yet, barbecue. Ribs. He wanted to chew flesh right off the bone, savoring the juice and fat. Ribs. And he wanted to fuck, to plunge into flesh. Smell and taste a human from every side and angle. Feel all things carnal. Yes.

Around 7 PM he was back home, having indulged in a complete all-you-can eat rib dinner from the Applebee’s by the base, then a rare cigar and a two-hour bout with a prostitute, also acquired from near the base.

Though she was at most 25 and he was over 40, after 2 hours she had had enough, even when he offered to pay more. Radmer, on the other hand, was only partially satisfied. The edge was off of his hunger, but he still felt restless, pacing and scratching at his hands and face.

Not fully knowing why, he drove back to the oasis. He wanted to see it, to lean against the tree, to be near the cairn. Part of him wanted to know if Firash would rise. Could a werewolf come back with only half a head and a body bloated with rot? He didn’t think so. But he wanted to know.

It was an hour from dusk when he arrived and the sun had cooled and dimmed but was not gone. Radmer noted that he could still see everything around the oasis in as much detail as if it were full daylight, maybe more. The edges of the leaves of the date palm he leaned on were more distinct, and he could see patterns in the dirt. He could smell the water, the air, himself, Firash, and the blanket around him. He could smell the ghosts of old cigarettes, long since smoked, on the blanket and on his own clothes. He knew there were ants and beetles in the cairn, he could hear them. He almost knew how many. He headache was gone, his neck was healed.

At 7:40 he saw the wolves approach the perimeter of the oasis. He saw 4, but sensed as many as 7, having heard and smelled them before any were in sight. Still the brown desert wolves, no big grays. They hung back, watching him.

He wondered if they wanted the easy meat nearby or something fresher. Firash or him. If they took him they could have both, and there were enough of them that if they flanked him, they could succeed.

One wolf, a fraction larger than the others, stepped toward the cairn, tilted back its head, and howled. A second later, the others also howled. The wolves continued, and the more they cried the more Radmer wanted to join them, mourning his friend.

The sun had almost finished sinking down over the hills. The wolves were still howling and yipping. The backs of Radmer’s hands burned and his palms itched. His mouth ached. His lips quivered.

He drew his pistol, cocked it, and pressed the muzzle in the soft are between his neck an chin, where a bullet from a .45 could enter, rip through his mouth and his soft pallet and his sinuses, bisect his brain, and blow out the top of his head like Krakatoa.

He rested his finger on the trigger. It was time to decide: Wolf or man. Live a wolf or die a man. Live or die. Wolf, or…