Opening my eyelids was like forcing an armored door with fused hinges. The world was a gray cascade of blurs that made my head throb beneath my exposed metal skull. I felt like a blind man mixed with a beggar who had been smoking crack all week, groping in the cold of the cart to figure out where I was, every heartbeat a slow and painful effort. Blood loss had left my thoughts light, as if my consciousness were floating a few inches above my head, ready to detach. The taste of copper in my mouth and the corrosive emptiness in my stomach I could still process. My extremities were numb, a buzzing replaced the sounds of the forest, and whenever I tried to focus on something, the world seemed to tilt to the left as if I were on a ship during a storm. With every jolt of the wooden wheels against the rocks on the path, a stab of pain shot through my abdomen. That was when I felt a small, warm hand poking my shoulder.
It was the skewer guy. He was there, crouching beside me with an expression that mixed dread and a kind of silly affection, as if I were a giant guard dog he had decided to adopt after watching me run over a truck. He held a bowl of a dark, steaming liquid that smelled of burnt herbs and despair.
I tried to make a gesture to say I was cold, crossing my arms over my chest and shivering exaggeratedly. Instead of covering me better, he started fanning his hands in front of his own face, blowing air as if trying to blow out a giant candle, thinking I was complaining about the heat. I twisted my face into a grimace of pure 'what the hell is this?', narrowing my eyes in a gesture of doubt so heavy that, for a second, the absurdity of the scene overcame even the exhaustion of my own injuries. I let out a low growl, the sound of a jammed meat grinder, and pointed to the furs and then to my chest, making a sign for "more".
He finally understood, but in his excitement, he didn't just cover me; he practically threw himself on top of me, trying to use his own weight to pin the furs down. For a moment, I was a sandwich of soldier and starving mercenary. I tried to push him away with one finger, but my strength was so depleted that I only poked his ribs. He interpreted this as an invitation to play or a sign of a heart attack, because he started making circular motions with his hands on my chest, as if trying to perform CPR on an iron statue.
"Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into."
I looked at him with my fixed black eyes, trying to convey as much "stop that right now" as a being without eyelids can under all those cloths on its face. He stopped, gave an awkward smile that revealed a missing tooth, and offered me the bowl again. To explain that I needed solid food, and not that weed tea, I made a very slow chewing gesture and pointed to my belly. He looked at my hand, looked at his own belly, and started patting his own paunch, making a drum sound and laughing. He thought I was complimenting his physique.
"I want to die. Not from the injuries, but from the language barrier."
The cart ground to a halt with a creak. I dragged myself to the crack in the boards to see where we were. The scenery was ridiculous. We were at the foot of a staircase that looked like it had been built by giants with too much free time and an even bigger ego. Thousands of white stone steps led up the mountain, disappearing into a mist that seemed to have been placed there by a Hollywood art director.
And there they were. The clients. A group of figures dressed in blue and white silks so fine they seemed to float independently of gravity. They had long, silky hair, faces that looked like they had been carved from luxury soap, and a posture so erect I wondered if they didn't have a broom tied to their backs. That sight was a bad joke. If someone showed these guys to the folks back in my unit, they would spend the whole day arguing over whether it was a rhythmic gymnastics team or a convention of shampoo models who got lost on their way to the studio. They were so delicate that I was afraid my smell of pig and sweat would disintegrate their clothes from a distance. Skewer noticed my gaze and tried to explain who those people were. He stretched out his fingers, pointing to the stars, and then made a "pixie dust" motion with his hands, blowing kisses in the air. I responded by making a gesture of (are they gay?) with my hand, twisting my wrist in the air. He gave a muffled giggle, nodding in agreement, but quickly turned serious and made a "shhh" sign, putting his finger to his lips and widening his eyes.
One of the clients, who looked more like a porcelain doll, approached our cart. He walked without making a sound, stopping two meters away, and looked inside. I was there, a mass of shadows under stinking bear pelts, with purple lights blinking faintly in my eyes.
The guy wrinkled his nose with a disdain so deep it looked like he had just found a cockroach. He said something with a voice that sounded like a prep school student, gesturing irritably at the cargo. Skewer, by my side, started doing frantic mimes to the noble. He pointed at me, then made a bunch of gestures, ending by crossing his arms and putting on a mean face. The client looked at him as if he were a noisy insect and then looked back at me. I, taking advantage of the moment of dark humor that the lack of blood afforded me, slowly raised a trembling hand from under the pelts. Instead of an attack gesture, I made the "hold on a second" sign with my index finger and thumb almost touching, then pointed to his face and made a "putting on makeup" gesture, tapping my fingers lightly on my cheeks. My little friend choked on his laughter, turning the sound into a forced coughing fit so he wouldn't be decapitated right then and there. The noble didn't understand the double entendre, but he picked up on the mocking tone. He narrowed his eyes, and an invisible pressure seemed to emanate from him, making the boards of the cart creak.
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"That's a lot of anger for someone so small."
After he turned his back and started yelling at some others, I shrank back under the pelts, ignoring it, feeling the cold return with full force. I pointed to the stairs, making a "get on with it" gesture. I just wanted them to deliver the boxes, get paid, and give me something other than herbal tea. Giving me one last pat on the shoulder, a gesture of "hang in there, buddy", he got out of the cart to help with the unloading. I stayed there, in the dark, listening to the melodic voices of the clients mingling with the rough grumbles of the mercenaries. My mind began to float again. I closed my eyes, letting the rocking of the cart take me to the edge of consciousness, as I imagined a piece of meat to eat.
The rocking of the cart changed rhythm when we began the journey back, descending the steep slopes that led away from that place. The dead weight of the merchandise had been replaced by the emptiness of the vehicles and the heavy silence of the survivors who could still walk. I remained there, buried under the pelts, feeling every jolt, but the journey now felt different. As we lost altitude, the vegetation changed drastically. We left the bare rocks and the biting winds of the summit to plunge into a forest that looked like it had come out of an old painting, but with a density that would make a recon sergeant resign.
The forest was a vertical labyrinth of colossal bamboos and twisted pines that seemed to fight for every inch of sunlight. The mist, which up there was a cold curtain, down here transformed into a persistent dampness that stuck to the skin and made the smell of wet earth and wild jasmine almost solid. Trunks were covered in emerald-green moss, and roots crossed the dirt path like petrified snakes. Visibility didn't exceed ten meters, and the sound was muffled by the dense foliage, creating a natural acoustic isolation chamber where anything could be lurking.
The stop for the camp took place in a wide clearing, one of the few spots where the forest canopy opened up enough to let us see the darkening sky. The ground was covered by a carpet of pine needles and time-rounded stones, suggesting that the place had once been the bed of a now-dry river. In the center of the clearing, large limestone monoliths rose from the ground, decorated with colorful lichens that glowed slightly in the gloom. It was an island of relative space amidst the sea of bamboo that surrounded us.
The reunion with those who had stayed behind in the rearguard lacked celebrations. It was a silent inventory of losses. The caravan leader walked among the men with an expression of defeat, counting those who were still breathing. The scene was that of a makeshift field hospital under the stars. Men groaning, the acrid smell of infections beginning to set into poorly washed wounds, and the smoke from small campfires trying to ward off the gigantic insects buzzing around. Many of those we had left on the path to the mountain were now just memories or corpses that the forest must already be digesting.
My companion, Skewer, wasted no time. As soon as the cart stopped, he jumped off and disappeared into the vegetation with a group of men. I stayed there, feeling the weakness pinning me to the wooden floor, watching the movement around me with my fixed black eyes. My vision was still grainy, an unstable blur that insisted on darkening at the edges whenever I tried to focus on something. About an hour later, I heard shouts and the sounds of a struggle coming from the dense woods. Skewer emerged from the edge of the forest carrying a whole leg of pork, the skin toasted and crackling over an improvised campfire out there, dripping hot fat over a piece of rustic bread. He appeared at the edge of the cart with a smile that seemed to light up the gloom, dirty with earth and pig's blood, but with the gleam of someone bringing salvation.
I grabbed the meat with eagerness and sank my titanium teeth into the pork leg. The first piece of hot fat hit my throat, and I could almost hear my internal systems screaming with satisfaction. It was pure protein. As I chewed, I felt the beginning of a chemical process I hadn't experienced since my last maintenance cycle at the base. My body began to channel that energy instantly. With the third bite of the large chunk of meat, the fog in my vision began to dissipate. The gray blurs gave way to sharper outlines. I looked at the guy and noticed he was watching me, fascinated and slightly horrified by the speed at which I had consumed that amount of food. I looked at Skewer and realized he was genuinely happy to see me "coming back to life".
"I take back the bad things I said earlier, Skewer." He couldn't understand me, but my conscience could.
Regeneration was a costly process. I felt the muscle fibers in my legs and torso tensing, cells multiplying at an accelerated rate to close the tears in my dermis. The itching was unbearable, as if thousands of needles were stitching my flesh beneath the linen bandages. The graphene filaments, which before looked like dead, opaque wires, began to emit a dull glow under the skin, indicating that nerve conductivity was being restored. The numbness in my fingers gave way to a heightened tactile sensitivity, allowing me to feel every grain of dust on the pelts where I lay.
I looked around the camp again. Now, with improved vision, the details of the human tragedy around me were unbearable. I saw a mercenary trying to close a deep cut on his arm with a filthy piece of cloth, his face pale from blood loss. Another soldier lay near a pine root, his short, noisy breathing indicating pulmonary failure. Skewer settled down beside me, wiping the grease from his hands on his own grimy tunic. He started telling some story using broad gestures, probably about how he had been the hero in the pig hunt. I didn't understand the words, but I understood the pride. I made a short gesture with my hand, closing my fist and giving a light tap on his shoulder, a military sign for "good job". He laughed, looking satisfied, and offered me some water from his bamboo canteen. Night finally fell over the clearing, and the sound of crickets and nocturnal animals began to fill the void left by the groans of the wounded. I stayed there, sitting on the pelts, monitoring the flow of the stars.
