Rogue Element

He unbuttoned his fly and his penis sprang from the opening expectantly. Her breasts were quite large, he noted, swallowing. The soldier took one of her raised hands and wrapped it around the organ jutting from his jungle greens. Suryei had no choice. He took his knife from its sheath, letting his rifle slip to the ground.

He placed the point of the dagger against her navel and told her to take down her pants. Suryei wanted to take the knife and cut off the disgusting thing in her hand but she was afraid. At least try, she demanded to herself. He was going to rape her then kill her anyway — of that she was certain. Damn it, go out fighting! Something in her eyes must have given the thought away because he thrust the knife into her stomach harder. The point pierced her skin and blood oozed down towards the top button of her pants. The soldier moved the knife down and sliced off the button, then he pushed her hard so that she sprawled on the ground on her back.

The soldier was so drunk with lust and power he had convinced himself that she wanted him. His tunnel vision failed to catch Joe struggling to his feet, or his fist as it smashed into the side of his jaw, breaking it. The soldier’s eyes rolled back in his head as if there was suddenly something of great interest painted on the inside of his skull, and then his legs dropped out from under him.

Joe smiled. Laying the arsehole out felt good but the effort hurt like a bitch. The smile turned to a wince and he collapsed onto the ground unconscious beside the soldier.

* * *

They all heard the distinctive crack of the carbine. It came from a patch of low ground. The sound bounced around but they were reasonably sure of its source. Wilkes estimated the distance at less than 100 metres. He gave the direction of the shot his best guess and double-checked it over the communications with his men. They all agreed.

An effort was required to fight the tendency to rush forward. That’s where training and experience was so important. They could run straight into an ambush. The men took their weapons off safety and rested their fingers outside the trigger guards. They moved ahead in twos and threes, leapfrogging each other, then covering the advance of the men behind them, weapons off safety, scanning the jungle ahead and to the sides for movement.

Suryei picked herself up off the ground and realised that she was hot with anger. She wanted to pick up the man’s gun and shoot him, empty its bullets into him, stick the barrel in his side and let the hot lead penetrate him. Somehow she resisted the urge and instead swung the weapon into the trees by its barrel. She heard it clatter through branches to the ground somewhere unseen.

The eyes of the man laid out by the snakebite darted left and right. He had either become suddenly aware of reality, or the activity around him had provoked delirium — probably the latter, Suryei decided, when she looked at him more closely. There was still no comprehension in his eyes.

She dropped beside Joe and put her ear to his chest. His heart beat strongly. A large amount of rich purple blood had seeped from the raw holes in his body. He opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times and said, ‘Ouch.’ Suryei was so relieved she didn’t know what to do. So she got up and ran around in a circle before retrieving a bottle of water from the rucksack. She put it to Joe’s lips. He shook his head, declining to drink.

‘Rather have a Coke,’ he said, wincing. ‘Oh, fuck that hurts… just help me up.’ Suryei put her arm behind Joe’s back and helped him sit. His stomach muscles were gone. Breathing felt like someone was chopping into his abdomen with a tomahawk. The pain was really starting to come on with a rush now. Neither Suryei nor Joe had enough medical experience to know whether the wound was serious, so they both just assumed that it was. The assumption was reasonable. If he didn’t get proper medical assistance soon, he would die, if not from blood loss then from secondary infection. Already, insects were swarming gleefully at the fresh source of food that had suddenly presented itself.

The soldier Joe had knocked out now started to move slowly. The actions were lethargic, but becoming less so, like an animal that had been frozen beginning to thaw. The man cried out when the bones in his jaw separated, sending a spike of pain to his brain that went off like a hand grenade. The bone had fractured, dislocating across the complex lattice of nerves on the side of his jaw. A couple of teeth had also been broken off at the root, exposing raw nerves. Any movement was agonising but all the soldier’s training told him that he had to get up and surmount the situation he now found himself in if he was to have a chance of surviving it. He sat up. He wanted to scream but he knew the pain in his jaw would increase many fold if he did.