Thick as Thieves 2: Under Your Command

Chapter 15

The skies of Chicago were bleak and grey. Much like the streets on which he and his men marched through: dark, sombre, hopeless. His breathing hastened through his rebreather, clutching his rifle, expecting at any moment for members of the rebellion to ambush them.

Normal citizens went about their day, avoiding the soldiers' gazes nervously as they walked through the thick haze to work, to see friends and family, to visit the market for what few items were being sold.

With the blink of an eye, it all turned ugly. As it usually did. A routine patrol escalated into a full blown battle. The enemy attacked from above, hidden in the city's oldest apartment complexes, sniping off his men one by one.

People started running and screaming. His soldiers started firing back. Bullets sprayed back and forth.

Then, a loud explosion sent several of them flying into the wall behind them. A car bomb. Fire and debris fell from the sky. His soldiers were bleeding, screaming.

"What do we do, Captain?"

He heard the desperate plea in his ear. He had no answer. He was no captain. He couldn't lead. He couldn't do this.

He looked up from the filthy concrete, blood and sweat dripping down his face. There was a man in the road ahead of him in ragged, torn uniform. Bleeding. Crying.

Captain Taylor felt his stomach tie in knots; his heart stopped dead in his chest.

"Gus?"

The man's eyes were glazed over, his skin a ghostly white. The blood spread across his torso, staining his uniform. He remembered Gus, and he remembered how he died. Not here, not now.

"Stop," Gus said. "Stop, please."

"I don't understand," Michael whimpered.

As Gus dropped to his knees, another figure grabbed Michael's leg and pulled him backwards. Michael yelled out, surprised, and looked up at the man who was dragging him.

The man was tall and broad, with tanned skin and short black hair. He grimaced, a disapproving look in his deep brown eyes. This man, too, was familiar.

"Guzman? S...Sir?" Michael stuttered, shocked, as his late, former superior threw down the limb and wore a cold, hollow expression.

"I died...for this?" he spat hatefully. "Orphaned my child...so she could live in fear? How could you let this happen, Michael?"

"I don't...I tried to do the right thing, that's all. I tried to do the right thing!"

"We still died," he said hauntingly. "Because of you."

He saw his men fall. Blood spattered. The light faded from their eyes. He saw it all too often. They fell, and the enemy fell too.

He pulled the trigger and these once normal people - these people who would go about their day and visit friends, visit family, go to work - he pulled the trigger and killed them all too. They fell and bled and screamed. Some were only kids. They were people just like him, just like his soldiers. They were all just people.

But they still fell.

Michael woke up on the couch, yelling in horror. His skin was hot and moist from sweat as he rolled off the warm fabric onto the cool floor and started panting. Every time he closed his eyes he saw people falling, dying. He saw war. It was still with him, following him even 85 million years in the past. The horrors he had seen. But Gus and Guzman...two men out of many he had failed to save. Their ghosts were still haunting him.