strength (book three)

day 437

i.

day 437

Just after we pass the tenth mile, I vomit.

My knees scrape the stone pathway as I retch into the dirt, the heels of my palms burning against the cracked earth. Coughing and blinking tears from my eyes, I hear roars of laughter and several cat-calls from behind me. I'm the first one to puke from the heat.

"Fucking nasty, Adam." The voice is deep and rough from too many cigarettes, so I know it's Mark without needing to turn around. I hear the grin in his voice and know he's laughing, too. "Couldn't even make it 12 miles. You're slipping."

There are echoes of "Pussy" and "Bitch", but these have become so ingrained in our vocabulary over the past 400 days that jeering insults scarcely reach my ears. Instead of responding I spit over and over into the sand, acid from the bile stinging against my teeth. The back of my throat feels like I have a pill stuck in it, slowly disintegrating before it can reach my stomach.

I stand and wipe the back of my hand across my lips, reaching for the bottle on the side pocket of my pack. My fingers shake only a little as I unscrew the worn plastic cap, throwing back a gulp of water to wash away the rest of the bile in my mouth and throat. With the toe of my boot, I kick sand over the pile of stench until it's buried out of sight. When I turn back around to rejoin the others, I produce the middle finger for Mark with one hand and put my water away with the other.

The sergeant, Rick, is watching me with narrow eyes from beneath the shadow of his cap. Probably wondering if I was hitting the booze last night – which I wasn't, but only because we don't have any booze. If I had a toilet to make hooch like they do in prison, I would be.

"Sorry, sarge," I tell him, hiking up the strap of my M16, the weapon swinging against my side as I rejoin the group. "It's just hot."

Rick sucks on his front teeth, producing a sour expression and deepening the wrinkles carved into his skin. "Thanks for the weather update," he grunts, jerking his head to the side in a quick motion. "Get moving, ladies."

"It's not the temp, it's because you're a pussy," Mark tells me.

We move on. It's a fast pace, half-walking, half-jogging, and a layer of sweat sticks the camouflage jacket to my back. Sundown is three hours away, and we need to make it out of Shol Gar before it gets dark. We're one of the first groups to move through this city, toward Mazar-i-Sharif, so we've all been moving quickly to get this over with sooner. This place has been abandoned since the airstrike, and I was told we shouldn't have any issues – but we're all a little uneasy anyway.

We're moving through the main track of the city, staying away from the outer edges because that's where Taliban, if any, could be holed up, but the sanded road is still winding and narrow at times. The heat is the worst in this area of Shol Gar, where the sun beats down to bake the air between the clay buildings. I'm sure the temperature is pushing 100 degrees, and just 20 minutes after my own episode, another soldier stumbles off to vomit.

Georgie pukes into the open door of an old furniture store, and we pause for a minute to let him finish. With one foot, I turn over a small slab of concrete from the ruined building across the street and sit. I unscrew the cap of my water bottle to take a drink, but mostly just to wash the layer of dust from my tongue. Sand is a part of the air in this fucking desert.

"Hot as balls, am I right?"

Mark shoves my shoulder as he steps in front of my spot, leaning forward to wipe sweat from his bald head with both hands. His dirty palms leave gray streaks against the back of his ears, but no one's showered in a week, anyway – we're all covered in a layer of sweat, sand, and dirt.