Trembling With Fear 11/18/2018

The Last Scar

The morphine is starting to kick in when Sergeant Freeman raps his nightstick against my door. The key clicks in the lock, and the burly Marine steps into my room. “Stay where you are,” he says, as if as if I could leave my bed without help and enough morphine to put an elephant in a coma.

Dr. Lanfield comes in behind Sergeant Freeman, a gaunt shadow in white lab coat. “Hello, Scar. How are you feeling?”

“Not my name.” I work the words through my uncooperative mouth. A grenade blast removed most of my right cheek three months ago. The scars have all but frozen the right side of my face.

“I’m sorry, Kyle.”

Usually he’d go on calling me that bullshit name, but he wants something, and he thinks it’ll be easier if he plays nice or pretends to. Fuck him.

“We have a mission for you.”

The drugs have dulled the nerve-scraping agony along my spine enough to sit up. “No more. Finished.” The word mission sent daggers of terror into my brain, but I won’t let him see that fear.

Dr. Lanfield sits in the plastic chair opposite my bed. Behind him, Sergeant Freeman looms. There was a time I might have fought them, and I know Freeman just aches for it, the sadistic fuck. But all I want now is to let the world slip away in a narcotic haze.

The doctor leans forward, feigning the compassionate physician. His usual bedside manner involves restraints and Freeman’s nightstick. “I know you’re hurting, and I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but your ability has saved a lot of important lives.”

I sneer at him. The shape of my mouth makes that one easy. “What about my life?”

“I’m sorry about all that, Kyle. Truly. How were we to know your gift would have these . . . unforeseen consequences?”

I chuckle, even though it feels like my face might rip apart. I can heal any wound, no matter how bad, just like those guys in the comic books. Unlike those high-flying heroes, whose bodies heal perfectly every time, my gift–as Dr. Lanfield like to call it–leaves behind scars.

The scars are no big deal when it’s a superficial cut or even the odd broken bone. They’re an altogether different matter when you eat a full magazine from an AK-47 to save the Vice President from yet another assassin. I healed, but each bullet left behind scar tissue in my lungs, in my liver, in my muscles. They called me a hero, but I didn’t feel like one when I jumped through the eighth story window of the military hospital they keep me in, hoping the glass and the fall would kill me. It’s not exactly comic book material when you wake up with most of your body held together with yet more scars and the knowledge maybe not even death can free you.

“No more.”

Dr. Lanfield shakes his head and sighs. “I could let Sergeant Freeman persuade you, but with your rapidly deteriorating condition, that would not suit our purposes. So I will make you an offer. Complete this mission, and it will be your last.”

“Don’t believe you.” I hate the tiny spark of hope his words have kindled. He’s lied to me before.

Dr. Lanfield shrugs. “Believe what you want. The mission requires only that you do what you do best: survive. Well, for a little while. Then it’s over. The missions, the pain, all of it.”

The tears surprise me. They stream down my battered face, a white flag signaling my compliance. I want what he is offering bad enough to do what he wants. He knows it, and his smile communicates that perfectly.

“One more.” The desperation I hear in those two words hurts almost as much as speaking them.

#

My glider is remote piloted and flying low. They told me the enemy would not detect the aircraft until it was too late. Outside the canopy a city appears on the horizon. It is the heart of the enemy’s empire, five million people.

They’ve seen the glider, but they can’t just destroy it. I’m too close. I could be carrying anything. Small arms fire erupts from the ground and bullets pierce the thin fuselage. I take a hit in the right leg, the left arm, and one bullet plows up through my left buttock, through my chest, and bursts from my neck in shower of blood. The wounds heal almost instantly, leaving keloid trails in my skin. I have enough morphine in my system to keep the pain at bay for now.

The glider shakes as the bullet holes compromise its aerodynamics, but I’m close. Buildings loom ahead, and the glider takes a sharp nosedive between them. People scatter as the ground rushes up to meet me. I brace for the impact, folding my body around the device.

Awful pressure.

Breaking glass.

Darkness.

#

The pain is a demon raking fire across my body when I come to. I would scream, but I can’t draw enough air. A piece of rebar has punctured my chest and both lungs. My body has healed around it. Many of my bones have broken and then mended in gruesome, unnatural angles.

Voices drift through the shattered canopy. The enemy approaches.

Fighting through the agony, I inspect the device. It is intact. I toggle open the switch guard, and the button beneath flashes red. Dr. Lanfield promised this would be my last mission. He promised an end to the pain. For the first time he told me the truth. I don’t think even I can come back from a thermonuclear blast at ground zero.

Frantic voices and then gunfire erupt outside the ruined glider. Bullets riddle my body, but I barely feel them. I will leave behind one last scar. I close my eyes and press the button.

END