9. George
Chapter Nine
George
We’ve been outside the wire for forty minutes, and the road is still empty. Which means absolutely nothing. Empty roads can kill you just as easily as crowded ones. Maybe easier. People relax when nothing is happening.
That’s usually the problem.
The truck rattles over cracked pavement, suspension groaning every time we hit a rut. Outside, heat rises off the ground in visible waves. Through the armored glass, everything looks farther away than it is.
Inside the vehicle, nobody talks much.
The radio crackles occasionally with coordinates, visual confirmations, or personnel updates. Then, silence again. The kind that settles between people who’ve spent too much time together. Nobody feels the need to fill it. We’ve heard every story. Know every complaint.
Out here, silence is comfortable.
Mack sits beside me in the rear compartment, rifle balanced between his knees. He’s chewing gum like it personally offended him. Somehow, I can hear it over the engine.
I adjust my grip on my rifle and scan through the glass. There's nothing but road ahead, a few low buildings in the distance, and nothing moving. The truck hits another rut, and pain flares along my ribs.
I try to keep my face still, but Mack looks at me. “You’re doing it again.”
I don’t take my eyes off the road. “Doing what?”
“Grinding your teeth.” I stop. I hadn’t realized I was.
“That’s extremely bad for you, and you know it.”
I glance at him. His gaze stays fixed on the window. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You’re welcome.” I roll my eyes at him and continue scanning the road, checking the buildings and the alleys in the distance.
Nothing. He doesn’t ask or say anything else, and that’s one of the reasons I can stand him.
Most people hear ‘yes’ and treat it as permission to keep digging. Mack knows better.
The truck hits another rough patch, and my ribs protest. This time, I can’t stop the breath that leaves me.
“Still hurting?”
“I’m alive.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I glare at him.
“You know,” he says, leaning back against the metal wall, “one day somebody’s going to ask how you’re doing, and you’re going to answer honestly.”
“Not likely.”
“I don’t know, man. Could happen.”
“Not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Keep talking, and you won’t have to worry about tomorrow.”
His grin widens.
I shake my head and look back through the glass. The road stretches ahead. Dust follows us in a thick cloud, swallowing everything behind the convoy. For a while, the only sounds are the engine, the radio, and Mack’s gum.
“You know… my old man used to disappear.” I don’t know why I say it. Maybe because I’m tired of thinking about her, about how she still hasn’t responded to anything. Or maybe because there are more things hurting me than I'd like to admit.
Mack stops chewing, and I immediately regret it.
“What?”
I shift in my seat. “He’d leave,” I say. “Weeks sometimes.”
Mack waits.
“Military?”
“Nah. He didn’t have that excuse.” The answer comes sharper than I mean it to. I look down at my rifle.
Mack stays quiet. The truck keeps moving.
“He’d just go.”
I shrug like it doesn’t matter. Like I’m not thirty-six years old and still carrying around a fourteen-year-old kid’s anger. “No warning. No explanation. He’d disappear, then show up whenever he felt like it.”
“What’d your mom say?”
“Not much.”
“That sounds healthy.” A laugh slips out of me. Short, and humorless.
“Yeah. We were great at communication.”
Mack snorts.
I look back through the window.
“He’d come home and act like nothing happened,” I say. “Couple days. Maybe a week.” Then I stop, but Mack doesn’t push, and that somehow makes it easier to continue. “Then he’d leave again.”
The truck bounces over another rut. I brace automatically.
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen the last time I saw him.”
Mack turns toward me. “Last time?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“No idea.”
He studies me, but I keep my eyes on the road.
“Shit.”
“Yep.”
Mack shifts his rifle between his knees. “You ever look for him?”
The question catches me off guard.
“No.” That’s a lie. We both know it. Mack doesn’t call me on it. I rub my thumb along the edge of my glove. “I spent half my childhood waiting for a man who kept leaving. Then I grew up and picked a job that puts me in the perfect position to leave anyone around me.”
Mack goes still, and there it is, the thing I’ve spent years not looking at too closely. I laugh once. Nothing funny about it. “Pretty fucking stupid when you say it out loud.”
“No.”
I shake my head. “I spent years promising myself I’d never be that guy.”
“You’re not.”
His answer comes too fast, and I look away. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that I’ve watched your miserable ass write over twenty letters to the same woman.”
My jaw tightens.
“Your old man left because he wanted to.”
“Still gone.”
“You keep trying to come back.” The words land somewhere I don’t want them to. I look through the window. A cluster of low buildings sits in the distance.
“My old man used to make promises too,” he says, adjusting on his seat. “Said he’d come to birthdays.”
A pause.
“Games.”
Another.
“My graduation.”
The gum has stopped moving. “He didn’t.” I don’t say anything. “He wasn’t gone like yours,” Mack says. “Not exactly.” His mouth twists and I understand it. A person can be close enough to disappoint you over and over.
“Mom raised three kids,” he continues. “He’d show up when it suited him. Make a bunch of promises. Disappear before he had to keep any of them.”
The truck hits another rut.
Mack barely reacts.
“I waited for him for years.” He laughs once, sounding a bit bitter. “Like an idiot.”
“You were a kid.”
“Still felt stupid.” He looks toward the window. “Eventually I stopped expecting him.” The words sit between us, and I feel how my stomach tightens. Mack glances at me. “You know the difference?”
I don’t answer.
“You keep trying to come back.”
I look at him.
“That matters.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.”
He adjusts the strap on his vest. “Even if it doesn’t fix everything.”
That one I believe. Maybe because he isn’t pretending love solves it. Maybe because he isn’t telling me Monica will wait forever. Maybe because somewhere between leaving and coming home, damage can happen anyway.
I nod once. It’s all I have, and Mack lets me have it.
“You are surprisingly wise today,” I say as I scan the road.
“I'm always like that. You're just the emotionally unavailable sergeant I tolerate who never notices.” I laugh, for real this time.
The first in longer than I can remember.
“You’re an asshole.”
“And yet, here you are by my side.”
“That’s because I’m trapped in a metal box with you.”
“Living the dream.”
“Fuck off.”
He grins.
For a few minutes, something in my chest feels less tight. Not fixed. Nothing is fucking fixed. But Mack doesn’t try to fix it, and that helps.
The radio crackles. “Five minutes.”
The driver confirms, and I straighten slightly. The conversation is now over because our attention shifts to the road, to the building, to the intersections, to everything and anything.
I adjust my grip on my rifle; the bruise along my ribs throbs, but I ignore it.
Mack notices the change in me, and his posture shifts too.
That’s the thing about people you’ve worked beside long enough.
You don’t need to say it. One second, he’s the asshole making jokes about my feelings.
The next, he’s locked in. Watching. Ready.
The checkpoint begins to take shape ahead, with low concrete barriers. A small structure near the road. Nothing moving that shouldn’t be. The radio crackles again. I scan left, then right, then check the road ahead. I settle my rifle against my chest. The truck keeps moving.
The checkpoint comes into view.
I’m ready.