Age of Blood

22

YaYa had no earthly idea where he’d left Alice. He was pretty sure he hadn’t killed her, but he couldn’t be certain. Although there wasn’t any proof either way, there were flashes of memory and she was nowhere in them.

Road-raging down the 5.

Flashing a gun at a motorist from Minnesota.

Stuffing his head into a bag of cheese curls in a convenience store south of San Clemente and barking at the clerk.

Parking his car and running back and forth across the highway next to the famous sign of a father, mother, and child running across the highway, just north of the Border Patrol checkpoint near Oceanside.

Snapping at the ocean, kneeling on the sand, his fists in front of him.

Howling at the lights on the Coronado Bay Bridge.

And now here he was, soaked to the bone and dripping water, outside of a building on Coronado Island with a sign out front labeled CORONADO PEST CONTROL. Where was he and how had he gotten here?

His arm pulsed hard enough to bring him to his knees. He looked at it and saw that the infection had not only spread to his entire forearm, it now occupied the fulcrum of his elbow. It was green and blue and purple. Neither color by itself could be good. Together they had to mean that something colossally bad was happening.

He looked up again. Pest control?

Then he remembered. This was his home. It was where he both worked and lived. Inside was what they affectionately called the Mosh Pit. And he was wet because he’d lost his ID somewhere and couldn’t get on base the usual way. How far he’d swum or how long he’d swum was a question he couldn’t answer. He was a SEAL, so swimming was the least of his problems.

He punched in his code and went inside. An Intelligence Specialist First Class sat slumbering behind the reception desk. He awoke with a start.

“Oh, I didn’t know.” The guard glanced down at a line of photos. “Chief Jabouri, sir.” He stood stiffly.

YaYa waved him back down and staggered through a door into the interior of the pit. He passed a glass-enclosed bookcase that held the logs of the unit. Across from it and around a corner was a cryptobiologist’s dream. Trophies from past missions and pieces of creatures adorned the wall like a supernatural big-game hunter’s wall of pride. Horns, heads, even a taloned six-fingered hand jutted from the wall.

He staggered to one of the couches in the room and fell hard into it. He cradled his wounded arm and whimpered. A climbing wall stood behind him. Far above, near the skylights, was netting that they’d used to improve their balance. Dorm rooms were behind and to his right, while on top of these was a workout room and the kitchen.

After staring at the wall for a good ten minutes, he forced himself to his feet, walked over and retrieved the six-inch claw. It had belonged to a qilin, one of the chimera creatures they’d encountered on the mission to Myanmar. He grabbed the claw in his right hand and placed it on the swollen tissue of his left arm. He gritted his teeth and sliced the skin open.

The pain drove him to his knees. He cried out.

The door to the Pit opened and the IS1 came running. “You okay, sir?”

YaYa roared, “Get out! Leave!”

The IS1 stared at the bloody scene for a moment, then reluctantly hurried back to where he guarded the entryway.

YaYa gasped as blood and pus seeped out of his arm. It smelled of sickness and death and made him gag. Instead of covering the wound, he squeezed the edges, trying to pump more of the nasty substance out of him. As bad as the arm and the pain made him feel, he felt better now than he had before he’d lanced the wound.

He found his way to his feet and made it to the bathroom in his dorm room. He got in the shower fully clothed and let the warm water cleanse him of his journey. He held the wound to the water and watched as more and more pus slid free.

He felt himself slipping. Something beyond his understanding was going on and he couldn’t stop it. And worst of all was that his team needed him. Even now they were probably hurling themselves into harm’s way without him. They might be wounded. They might be in need of his electronics expertise. They might just need his firepower. And here he was, standing in a shower back at base and crying over an infection in his arm.

A few moments later he turned off the shower and stepped out. He slipped out of his clothes and stood at the sink, dripping. He grabbed a bottle of aspirin and opened it into the sink. With his right hand, he punched the pills until they were mostly powder. Then he grabbed a handful of the substance and wiped it on the open wound. It had an immediate dulling effect. Then he grabbed a length of gauze from the medicine cabinet and wrapped it tightly, taping the ends and the middle to ensure it wouldn’t slide or twist apart.

Finally clean and dry, he changed into mission clothes. He got online and contacted SPG through their secure server to let them know he was mission ready. Then he sent an email to his father. His old man had never wanted him to join the military, much less become a SEAL. His father had wanted him to become a holy man like himself. He wanted him to better learn the teachings of Allah and live a better life.

Allah is in our blood, he’d cried. You can’t fight against blood.

Such was the old argument.

YaYa believed that he could be a better man by being part of society. He also believed that the world needed positive Muslim role models. It seemed as if every time Mr. and Mrs. Caucasian or African American saw a Muslim, the first thing they remembered was the loss of the towers. The tragedy was certainly a horrific cultural mnemonic, but it shouldn’t serve to define all Muslims.

So while his father would prefer they become reclusive and live among themselves, YaYa believed that they should open their mosques and reveal themselves as the peace-loving, God-fearing, good and caring people they were.

Although he hadn’t actually spoken to his father in over a year, he’d started to write him. Since Myanmar they’d begun to email more. Even if it was mere bits and bytes instead of actual spoken words, it was nevertheless a form of communication. At this point, YaYa would take what he could get.

So he began his email with Dear Father. And then he sat there. What was he going to say? How was he going to describe his feelings?

Dear Father, I think I am sick.

Dear Father, I might be possessed.

Dear Father, maybe you were right.

Dear Father, I miss you.