Cayo Elina 38

Elina sat up in the mud, clutching her back. ‘Anyone could just walk up and kill me right now.’ She thought, trying to pull herself together. When she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye she lunged for one of the zombie’s fallen weapons.

“Easy. It’s just me.” Justin said. “Where are you hurt?”

“Back.” Elina said through clenched teeth.

“Lemme take a look.”

Elina rolled back over onto her stomach and groaned at the pain as she stretched out flat. Justin pulled up her jacket, “You should be okay the body armor is pretty effective against small arms fire….Where’s your body armor?”

“They didn’t have anything that fit.”

“I knew it, I knew you were too…uh, well, thin.”

“How bad?”

“Looks like you got hit above the kidneys. I have two entrance wounds. You notice any blood in the front?”

“No.”

“So the bullets are still lodged inside.”

“Great. You gonna pull them out here?” Elina asked.

“What? Me? Hells no! I can put on a bandage or give you a painkiller, if we had any, maybe set a broken arm. Surgery is beyond my current training.”

“Will I make it?”

Justin didn’t know how to answer that, short term she probably was going to live, but depending on the damage he could be looking at a mortal wound. “Uh, how many zombies have you killed, Elina?”

“I lost count over a year ago.”

He nodded, ‘Stay positive, that’s what they told me in training.’ Out loud he said, “Then you’ll be fine, probably won’t even need surgery.”

“You sure, ‘cause right now it hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“Sure, I’m sure. You sit tight here for a minute while I go check on Ricardo.”

“Don’t forget about Hector, send someone to bring him up.”

‘Everybody orders me around, even the civilians.’“Sure thing, just relax.”

Making his way to Ricardo, Justin saw that the zombie was already sitting up holding his arms tight around his chest, hugging himself. His battered helmet sat on the ground between his legs.

“You okay?” Justin asked.

“Not much you can do for me if I’m not.” Ricardo observed quietly.

“I could straighten out a leg or something, if I had to.”

“Nah, no broken legs, but I’m pretty sure I lost a few ribs and probably my spine, it’s never felt right since…”

Justin gave him a quizzical look.

“Since I came back. Just feels like someone stuffed a bunch of dirt into my spine. With a few rocks for good measure.”

Pointed at the helmet Justin asked, “What’s with the hat?”

“Pondering my mortality. No disrespect to the living over there or anything, but she set me up to draw the gunfire and I ended up taking a couple rounds to the head.” Ricardo put his fingers into the holes right near the top of the helmet. “If this thing hadn’t held I’d probably be really dead. That’s got me thinkin’ maybe I want to get out of this game.”

Justin lowered his hand to give Ricardo a lift up. Looking the beat up zombie in the eyes he shook his head and said, “Nah, if not this, what else you got?”

“Living in a shack in the middle of the swamp somewhere.”

“Until someone came for you. And they would come for you, we both know it. Better to surround yourselves with a bunch of friends.”

Ricardo tilted his head sideways, “Is that what you guys are? My friends?”

Laughing, Justin nodded, “If not us, who?”

Elina came limping towards them, a grimace on her face.

“You hurt?” Ricardo asked.

She nodded.

“Good, bitch, I hope it burns. You almost got me killed!”

Elina smiled, “That wasn’t the plan.”

“Do you’re plans always involve sailing over my head while I run up the middle?”

“No. Actually I wanted to follow you. I intended to…”

“But?” Ricardo prodded.

“I wasn’t brave enough. You got me on balls, Ricardo, I stepped into that line of fire and after the first salvo flew by my head the only thing I could think of was to jump.”

He shrugged, “Yeah, well, that sucked for me.”

“It didn’t work out so great for me either. I thought…I thought things would be different.” Elina said eyeing Justin.

Justin smiled innocently. “Combat is always different from what people think it is going to be.”

“Yeah.” Elina said, “It is. We rescue anyone? Did we drive them off?”

Justin filled both of them in on what was going on and ended with, “Well I better go run down….uh, Hector… Make sure he’s okay.”

As Justin moved off Elina debated on bringing things up with Ricardo again. ‘I don’t even really know him,other than Perry vouches for him.’

“Something on your mind, doña?” Ricardo asked, addressing her as well respected woman.

Elina laughed and then winched from the pain, “Thanks. I needed that.”

“What?”

“A bit of a laugh, Ricardo.”

“You know superman started out as a leaper.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The original superman, he couldn’t fly, he could only leap. As in ‘leap tall buildings in a single bound’, that sort of thing.” Ricardo said.

“Uh…maybe I’m hurt worse than I thought, ‘cause I’m not getting what you’re talking about.”

“You leaped over me and went a good, what? Twenty meters? That’s quite a jump from a stand, wouldn’t you say?”

Elina slowly shrugged, but nodded too, “I’ve killed a lot of your kind, it was bound to have an effect.”

“I know, so you start by leaping, who knows? Maybe you’ll end up flying?”

The afternoon was filled with, as Corperal Wogsner had predicted, ‘a shit detail’. Hauling Alban back to the helicopter was the easiest part of the job, he was semi-conscious, but as far as Justin could tell he was stable, not that they could have helped him much where they were. Sidney made the call to risk Alban’s health and stay to gather up the machinery they had been after from the start.

Elina had stayed with the helicopter with George, allowing Gus to use his considerable strength to help carry, push and pull the equipment back to the helicopter through the woods and swampy ground.

Alban would have lucid moments and during one of them he scowled at the waste of dragging the motorized unit through the woods, claiming the part they needed was only a fraction of the entire thing.

“There’s batteries in there too, those are what weigh it down so much. I think ours are still good and I don’t know if they are compatible with yours. I need my books to check the numbers.” He started to rise, but settled back down with a stern hand on his chest from George.

“Relax, Alban. They got this. You just chillax a bit and we’ll have you back to base in time for a late dinner tonight.” George told him.

After three hours, Elina grew restless and started pacing in front of the helicopter’s open door.

“Back bothering you?” George asked, probably only the third time he had spoken to her that day.

“Yes…No.” A puzzled look came over her face and her right hand went instinctively to her back. “Would you check it for me?”

George shrugged and grinned, “Sure.”

Elina pulled up her shirt and he whistled, “I hope you got the number of the train that hit you.”

“Are there holes?” she asked.

“Can I touch you? There’s a lot of dried blood.”

Elina nodded and with the aid of a canteen of water George slowly sponged off her back. “You got bruising, but you know what? It’s yellow, and slightly blue, like a bruise you’ve had for a long while, not just dark blue and red. No holes, but I see a couple of scars.” He touched a her back in two spots with his index finger. “That hurt?”

“It’s tender.”

“Your skin is bulging there. I’ve seen a few gunshot scars, they don’t usually bulge. Unless, maybe, they are swelling from an internal infection.”

“Great.”

“I think you’re going to be fine. So does Justin.” Cocking a thumb back over his shoulder at Alban, George said, “It’s him we have to worry about.”

By the time the others had gathered everything they could find from the other helicopter the sun was setting. Sidney rousted Alban and interrogated him about the parts the Germans absolutely needed to fix their ship. Alban was sure that the main part was in the console.

“But is it any good? We landed hard, it might be broken.” Alban said with a drug induced slur to his voice.

“It’s fine.” Sidney said, “George can you get us out of here okay in the dark?”

“Sure, no problem. Miami is a straight shot from here.”

“How’s the night vision package on this thing?” Sidney asked.

George laughed, “We’ve got radar. Sergeant, ‘night vision’, you’re killing me here. That stuff all got commandeered long ago. I think there is an old set in the bailout bag, but it’s not good enough to fly by..” Patting the side of the helicopter, he said, “She isn’t set up in a combat configuration, hasn’t been for a long time. Besides the radar will work fine, I don’t need to see to fly or land.”

“Yeah, but can you find a wooden ship off the coast with the radar?” Sidney asked.

The group became very quiet, waiting for George to answer.

“You want to go after them?” George asked. George was a naval officer, well above the sergeant any way you looked at it.

“Can we find them? Sir.” Sidney asked.

“Knock it off, ‘sergeant’. Yeah. I can find them. The thing is if they had one surface to air missile, why won’t they have another?”

“I think if they did, they would have fired it when we showed up.” Sidney said.

“I didn’t even see a ship out there this afternoon when we came in.”

“I think they fired and ran.”

“I could see that. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have another SAM waiting for us.” George said.

“Are there any counter measures left?”

This set George to laughing again, indicating ‘no’ without actually saying the word.

“How are you intending to take the ship out?” George asked, “We don’t have any munitions of our own.”

Sidney draped his arm around the M240 machine gun mounted on the side of the helicopter. “This should be sufficient against a wooden ship.”

George nodded, “Yeah, I think you’re right and Sawyer was expecting a kid next month with that senorita in the mess hall.” Sawyer was the other pilot, whose body had not been found when they canvassed the area to gather identity tags.

“That he was. They shouldn’t get away with it. We’re the goddamned United States of America, you don’t fuck with us and come away  in anything other than a body bag.”

“Alright. But not for revenge, we’ll do it to make the area safer for future flights, we can’t have a ship running around shooting down our aircraft.” George said.

Sidney nodded.

“And for revenge.” George added, eliciting a ‘hoo-ah’ from the marines.”

Elina thought about jumping in, explaining the bigger picture to the men, but she kept silent, looking around for Gus. He was staring at her, squinting in the dim light despite being no further than three meters away. She gave him a smile and thumbs up and he nodded at her.