AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I'm on the ground, but trying to capture the action as it happens. This is what war photographers live for.
Screams and the sound of bullets fill the air. If there is a hell on Earth, it’s in this moment. The air is so smoky with artillery residue that it's impossible to see anything.
I'll never forget the silence that surrounds me a few minutes later. With the dark smoke and the lack of screams, it's like I'm the last person on earth.
When the smoke clears, the ground is littered with bodies. Some them, too many us. And Sgt. Tennyson is one of them. He's lying on the ground, a blank look in his eyes, like he's still keeping watch over the horizon. A bit of white is peeking out from his hand. I crouch down, and pull at it, obviously not having any boundaries. It's a picture of a golden-haired girl with sad gray eyes. I wonder if she knows how much it meant to him when she sent letters, or if she understood how much she meant to him.
I tuck the picture back in his hand and raise my camera. I take a picture of just his hand, grasping that photo, feeling like a bastard the whole time. It's the kind of shot that could get me the Pulitzer, but I feel hollow and dirty inside as I take it.
"Carter, we need to get out of here," another soldier says as he runs towards me. He takes a look at the body at my feet and grimaces.
"Who takes care of the bodies?" I ask, unable to take my eyes away from that hand grasping that photograph. I feel desperate in this moment, desperate to have anyone in my life who I care about as much as he cared about her.
Would anyone cry for me if one of these assignments was actually the end for me? This could have been it. The bullet-ridden bodies around me are a testament to that.
What would it be like for someone to cry for me?
"Carter!" the soldier repeats sharply, and I shake myself out of my reverie, trying to walk steadily behind him, even though the adrenaline coursing through my limbs makes my legs feel like jelly.
It's time to get out of this hellhole.
"This picture is career making, Carter," Wallace says as he examines the photograph closely. "You've really made history with this."
I nod absent-mindedly, looking around the busy office. I'm back in New York, and it's so far from the death and deadly beauty of the sand dunes, that everything I just went through feels like a dream. It's like that with all of my assignments, I've come to realize. They're all just brief blips in time, the horror fading from my memory as quickly as the next assignment comes.
I'm usually desperate to get to my next assignment for that very reason—I need to rid myself of whatever terrible thing happened.
But it doesn't feel right to forget right now.
I knew I would regret taking that picture of him holding the picture. It's haunting my dreams, and now that my boss has seen it, I'm never going to escape it.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
"I'm going to take the rest of the day off," I tell him. He waves me off, not taking his eyes from the picture. I'm sure if he looked at me, I'd see dollar signs in his eyes.
I don't talk to anyone as I leave the office. I've never been known as a particularly social guy, but I'm sure that I'm throwing out the "fuck off" vibe pretty hard right now, because none of my coworkers are even meeting my eyes.
The fact that there is a chill in the air is strange to me after weeks of close to a hundred and twenty degree temperatures. I didn't wear a coat today when I left my apartment, and I put my hands in my pockets, trying to ward off the cold as I walk briskly through the crowds of people.
I hate crowds. At this point, I don't even remember how I ended up in New York City, except it was as fucking far away as I thought to get from my childhood in Texas and memories of her.
Someone coughs next to me, and I sidestep away from them. That's another thing about this place. It's filthy.
As ravaged and dangerous as all my assignments are, at least they're usually in remote locations, untouched by anything except some heavy artillery.
I pass a convenience store. A look at the rows of cigarettes behind the cashier has me itching to walk inside. It's been twenty-three hours since I last smoked. Every time I come home, I quit. And every time I go on an assignment, I start again.
It's definitely not the stress that makes me smoke.
I laugh just thinking that statement.
I manage to continue my walk past three more convenience stores without going in, and I consider the day a success just for that fact alone.
Finally, I make it to my apartment. If you can really call it that. I don't need a big place, since I'm never home, but for the first time in a while, I find myself looking at the place in disgust. There's nothing in it in the way of personal effects. Any stranger could be living here. There's definitely nothing that shows I've been living here for five years. There aren't even pictures on the wall of places I've been.
She would have fucking hated this place.
I sigh and pick up the pile of mail that's stacked up just inside the door. I don't bother stopping my mail when I go out of town, there's never enough that comes, even in months-long assignments to make it necessary.
