Jack Roberts for Kennebec7 (War of the Realms)
Praying for Dex, Part III
I believe in miracles. I believe in magic. I really do. They just never happen in a very predictable manner. Almost two years ago, so many amazing things happened to me in the space of two weeks that you couldn’t call them anything else but miracles. Miracles aided by magic.
Perhaps you remember when I first blogged here for Kennebec7 a month or so ago, I mentioned my death, how when Sadinsky shot me inside that biosphere, I simply fell apart. What I mean is, I literally dematerialized. Thousands, maybe millions, of infinitesimal pieces of Jack Roberts flying around. One of the first things I did, or my soul directed my essence to do, how ever you want to try to put words to a miracle, was to hurry back to my badly injured comrades, Dexter Thornton and Aranya Chen.
I had left them behind when I set out from the forest where I had made a forced landing of the helicopter we took from Yat’s men. Dex and Aranya were too badly wounded to move. That whirlybird definitely needed a miracle. Yat and Sadinsky had kidnapped Terry, and I was out to get them. To get my son back and to finish off those two demons who had destroyed so many lives.
The incomprehensible thing about miracles and magic is that sometimes they happen when you least expect them, and then they stop. The nonphysical forces in the cosmos, call them gods, angels, dark entities, Great Spirit, whatever you want, produce their phenomena according to a schedule best known to them. Then they seem to forget about you. One minute, you’re Spiderman, the next you’re Peter Parker, and you stay Peter Parker.
Dexter, I’m thinking about you, bud. Imagining you in that hospital bed in Georgetown. Sending you my vibes. Imagining you getting up from that bed and walking away, putting both of your big strong arms around darlin’ Carla. I’m here in Myanmar, bro, my knees wet from the moist ground where I am praying, looking up into the stars, hoping, believing, that the angels are listening. Jannelle, honey, you’re up there, my angel. Take care of Dex, would you, sweetheart?
I had spent a whole day in a secluded jungle valley tending to Dex and Aranya’s wounds.
Night was falling again. I hated losing another day before reaching the fortress that I believed was now about twenty miles away. That’s where I believed they were holding Terry. I had lost the element of surprise, that is, if we ever really possessed it. The Dark Seekers had caught us unawares last night while Dex and Aranya and I sat around the campfire. I felt fortunate that somehow Sadinsky hadn’t attacked us again today while I was busy mending Dex and Aranya, the critically injured enemy pilot, and lastly myself. I could hardly put any weight on my foot anymore.
Finally I had to laugh. What a ridiculous soldier I had become. Here I was in the middle of the Burmese wilds with a shot-up helicopter, almost no food and water, three limping and battered fighters, plus a one-armed enemy Chinese pilot, for whom I was actually starting to feel sorry!
But it’s the way our private war against Sadinsky and Yat had been going the past year or so. Totally by guts and instinct.
Her crutch under her right arm and her machine gun strapped over her left shoulder, Aranya limped over to my side. Achingly she lowered herself to the ground next to me, dropping the crutch and bringing her canteen up to my lips. Wordlessly I put my arm around her waist, and with my other hand I held her wrist as she guided the water down my throat.
Thanks, I told her with a tired smile after I had sipped as much as I dared, given the shortages we were facing.
Thanks, she deadpanned as she planted a hard hot kiss on my lips. Silently we looked into one another’s eyes long after the kiss was finished. Weary smiles tugged at both our mouths. From time to time, throughout the battles and danger we had faced during our Dark Seeker chase, Aranya and I remembered that, somehow, when we weren’t looking, maybe we had started falling in love. Something like that.
She knew she would never replace Jannelle in my heart. She wasn’t sure she would want to, even if she could. I had only truly realized what a unique woman I had married after she had been taken from me. The same man who had stolen and drugged Aranya, and removed her from her life for almost a year removed Jannelle from life itself. Aranya and I had something in common—a consuming desire to remove Sadinsky from earthly existence.
She showed me a packet of painkiller she had just found in the helicopter.
How about I give some to Jinghong? Jinghong was the helicopter pilot who
when the day had started thought he might bring my dead body back to the fortress. That was before my AMAK had taken off most of his arm.
Good idea. First, let’s see if we can get him to take a little food.
The only food, water and medical equipment we had left was that which we found on the helicopter we had commandeered from the Dark Seekers. With this, I had managed to partially clean and set Dex’s right shoulder, which had been shattered by Wa bullets. Aranya had sprained her back and apparently had suffered a badly bruised kidney along with an injured hip. Although both Dex and Aranya were quick healers, it would be many weeks before they would be ready for battle. Dex at this moment was asleep – aided by painkillers.
The bones in my foot luckily had only been cracked, not broken, by the bullet that had hit me. I was less fortunate with the stab wound in my chest and shoulder, but still lucky enough. I was experiencing a lot of pain, but apparently no vital organs had been penetrated.
As I helped Aranya redress Jinghong’s bloody stump, I suddenly found myself growing woozy. Part of it was the pain from my own wounds. But another part of me simply was reacting to the futility of a life filled with battles and blood. Here I was trying to give comfort to a man who only hours ago, I had deprived of half an arm.
When we finished putting a clean bandage around his stump, Aranya began to prepare the needle for injection of the painkiller. Hold him up so I can get at the other arm, Aranya told me.
The unconscious pilot stirred while I gripped him around the waist. Foggily Jinghong’s eyes opened. He saw the stump of his arm in his lap. His whole face creased with suffering. Holding him from behind, I tried to make him comfortable in my arms.
Take it easy, buddy, I told him, Hang in there. You’re gonna be okay.
As I watched Jinghong slip in and out of conscious, while Aranya prepared to send the painkiller into his vein, I noticed he was a handsome young man, that he now seemed so harmless, almost like a child.
Suddenly, cold fear was streaking through my own body, I saw something incredible! When Aranya’s needle entered the vein in the crook of Jinghong’s remaining good arm, and I was holding him against my chest, my arms wrapped around him, I witnessed a different reality than I had ever dreamed existed.
First I saw Jinghong’s auric energy slowly emanating from his body. Closest to the wounded man’s figure – shining like a neon light – he glowed a pale yellow color. An inch or so off his body, that color blended into a yellowish green.
But even more was unfolding before my eyes. I had seen auras for the first time last night when I was fighting the Wa warriors in the dark. They had glowed an orange-red. In fact, their auras had made them easier to kill.
Now something else was happening. I even blinked my eyes once or twice to try to change the picture. To return to my ‘normal’ sight. But my normal sight had changed.
Right before my eyes he witnessed Jinghong metamorphosing! Changing! His wounded body was right there where it was supposed to be. But something else was happening. It looked something like a double exposure overlaying the normal Jinghong.
His etheric body was changing. Jinghong was becoming a younger version of himself. Younger and younger. My mouth dropped. I was stunned. I even watched the guy in my arms become a newborn infant!
The changes occurred so quickly. Like time lapse photography or morphing on a computer, the baby Jinghong’s face gradually became all crinkly as he turned into an ancient woman with long, wild hair and the fierce eyes of an eagle. I don’t know; maybe she was Native American.
Her stare riveted me. I felt like hunks of lead had been jammed into my chest. Did I know her? Had we been enemies in a prior lifetime? Why did she wear that lingering look of hatred? Somewhere, sometime, we had known one another
Aranya’s voice from the present brought me back. “Sleeping like a baby,” she commented as she withdrew the needle from Jinghong’s arm.
Just before dawn broke over the Burmese jungle, Dex Thornton awoke from his much needed twenty-hour nap.
Lying there, cozily encapsulated in a bedroll, Dex told me he felt like he had been buried under a ton of bricks. Every bone ached. His right shoulder felt like someone was prodding him over and over with a red-hot poker. When he wanted to shift his long, lanky body so he could look upon something other than the crows quarrelling overhead in the trees, every fiber and cell in his body protested.
I’m getting too old for this stuff, Dex groaned. When he managed to tilt his head to the right he could see Aranya. Holding herself up with the help of crutch, she tended a coffee pot on a fire. Beyond Aranya, he saw me. I was giving Jinghong some water.
Ron, Dex called hoarsely to Aranya, Get thou hither, girl!
Dex! she looked up, an uncharacteristically joyous smile on her face. As fast as she could limp, she headed to his side. You old fossil! she cried, giving him a kiss, Are you finished goofing off?
Shortly, I joined them. Aranya and I checked Dex’s shoulder dressing, cleaned the wound again, and as best we could manage, we reset his shattered shoulder. Elated that our grizzled friend seemed capable of taking the first steps on his road to recovery, we brought him coffee and some of the dry food we found in the helicopter.
When Dex was able to walk a bit, we brought him to Jinghong. The Dark Seeker pilot, although seldom conscious for very long, seemed to have stabilized somewhat. When Jinghong did open his eyes, Dex was surprised to see in his face a look of peace and gratitude.
Where do we go from here? Dex asked me when we were alone.
I was trying to fit a clean shirt on Dex’s back. I had found a stack of dark green uniforms in the helicopter that were meant for Yat’s guardsmen. Dex grinned ironically as the enemy’s shirt slid over his good left arm. It was a bit short, but it felt a lot better than the sweat and blood soaked clothing he wore during the battle two days ago.
You don’t go anywhere, Dex, I told him firmly. You and Ron stay here with Jinghong.
While you do what, bro? asked Dex, Address the House of Representatives about balancing the budget?
I’m going to drop in on Sadinsky.
You and who’s army?
I tugged on my five-day’s growth of whiskers. It was gray and brown. Mostly gray. But not as gray as Dex’s hair. You and me and Ron have made a pretty good army so far, amigo. But today I fly with the angels, that is if I can get this bird in the air. It took a lot of bullets yesterday.
Dex looked at me long and hard. The ‘angels’, huh, he slowly sat down on a large rock.
I nodded. I’m gonna come back and get you characters. Count on it.
Of course you are, partner, Dex said softly. We remained there in silence for several minutes. Then Dex said, They’ve probably got a thousand armed men there, people who hate your guts, Jack.
You think as many as a thousand, eh?
Well, I don’t know it for a fact, Dex answered, but, y’know, we’ve been taught to listen to our visions, Jack.
And that’s what you see? I looked hard into the ground beneath his feet.
Yeah, Dex said, looking away as he lightly massaged his shoulder. Not only that, Jack, but they know we’re out here. Look, they even sent this bird to pick up our bodies. He nodded toward the helicopter. I frowned and rubbed my chin.
Then Dex made an observation he had hesitated earlier to make. Terry’s there, isn’t he? They got him, don’t they? Aranya’s dream was right.
How do you know that? I asked him, my eyes probing Dex’s face deeply.
Maybe it was the painkillers or something, Dex shrugged with his good shoulder, looking off into the jungle, but it felt very real. I kept having dreams – visions – whatever. I saw Terry in some fortress. Sadinsky was there. Some fat turkey I assume was Yat. It was nasty, Jack.
I saw the same vision, Dex. I’m going in, pal. Now.
Jack Roberts
Somewhere in Myanmar
05/02/2010
