Dawn's Light
...
...fire...
...
...pain...oh, God...
...
...dying? Am I dying? Am I...
...Julia...
...
...I'm sorry, Julia...I'm so sorry, honey...
...Daddy will miss...you...
Whiteness all around. Bright. Too bright. Painful.
No pain. No more.
I can't think straight. I can't see where I am, what I'm doing. I try to look around but all I see is an endless void of white, stretching for miles, endlessly, into the horizon.
Where the hell am I?
I get up with surprising ease. Shouldn't I be dead? I'm supposed to be dead! But nowhere is the caved-in hotel. I am naked, yet clothed in a robe of light. My wounds are gone. I can still walk.
And there is no pain. I conclude at first that the pain of my many injuries is so great that my brain can no longer comprehend it, but this is not...can not...be the case.
I am waiting for something.
I am?
I should be confused, but something is caressing my brain, telling me to be patient. I want to move, to speak, to do anything, but I can't.
Then she appears, coalescing in the whiteness, a spectral form that is also somehow corporeal. At this point, I'm not even surprised she's here.
Rainbow Dash. Of course she's here. I must be dead.
"No, you're not dead, Ben Wolfe."
She speaks in her own voice, not my daughter's, and without emotion. Though her brow is furrowed and her eyes are hard, she does not look sad.
My voice begins to work again, and I say, "How am I not dead?"
"I can't answer that, Ben."
"But you saved me before!"
"No, I didn't. Rainbow Dash is not real, Ben."
"But...you..."
"I'm surprised," she says, remaining emotionless, though I can detect minute frustration in her voice. "I'm surprised how long you have maintained this fallacy. There is no Rainbow Dash, Ben Wolfe. The ponies of Equestria are fictional. They always have been. They always will be."
I feel like I should be more shocked than I currently am, but continue to speak. "What about Kawari? Bagram? Kabul?"
"Do you believe in God, Ben?"
I look at her incredulously. Her face remains expressionless. "I...well, yeah..."
"Would you say God saved you all those times?"
"No," I answer firmly. "They told me the figurine, your figurine, was the last thing that the shrapnel hit before stopping, back at Kawari. At Bagram...I looked at you, and if I hadn't I'd have been killed in the truck wreck, or I'd have shot myself. Then at Kabul...the helicopter...Adam Collins..."
"You don't honestly believe the loyalest pegasus in Equestria would risk her wings to save your skin not once, but four times?"
"I thought you said ponies were fictional."
"They are," she replies. "Rainbow Dash is a fallacy, Ben. She is a cartoon character whose plastic figurine happened to be with you all those times you were in danger."
"Then why are you here? And what are you?!"
She smiled, but it was not a kind smile. "You will not like my answer. I've never known you to be partial to crypticism."
"Tell me!"
"I am whatever you want me to be, Ben."
I say nothing else. My mind is roiling. She continues.
"Some call me God. Some call me Satan. Some call me an angel, a savior, while others call me a demon, a monster, the devil himself. You call me Rainbow Dash, or Julia Wolfe. You call me Loren Wolfe. You call me Lionel Kassel, Derek Frost, Adam Collins, and everyone you have ever known. I am everyone and everywhere, Ben Wolfe, and I live and die for everything."
She is speaking cryptic bullshit. And she is right; I'm not partial to it.
"What the fuck are you talking about?!"
"I am that which watches the world. I am that which maintains the cycle of life for all things. They who call me death, I appear as life. They who call me life, I come to them as death."
She isn't making sense, and my head is starting to hurt.
"You only see me as Rainbow Dash because you want to see me as Rainbow Dash. I have witnessed your brutal trials, Ben Wolfe. You question your sanity, wonder whether or not the world is as it seems. The world is not as it seems. This place, your home, is rife with all things good and evil, and to provide balance, neither must ever outweigh the other."
"What are you saying?" I ask as she steps closer.
"Kawari. Bagram. Mazar-i-Sharif. Kabul. You were supposed to die."
My heart stops. My breath catches in my throat. Her eyes are cold and penetrating. "W-what?"
"At Mazar-i-Sharif, when your men dodged every bullet and every bomb, I was the one doing the shooting and bombing. At Kawari, when a ricocheting sniper's bullet pierced your chest, I was that sniper. At Bagram, when the rocket flipped your truck, I was that explosion. And at Kabul, when you were lying on your back, dying, I was the fire that brought you down to my level, to finish you off for good.
"But I couldn't. She was too powerful. She would not let me, even when you gave her to Collins. She would not let me take your life."
"R-Rainbow Dash? But...you said she..."
"No. Not Rainbow Dash. Your daughter."
Ice fills my body, only to be melted by a surging flame in my heart. "Julia?"
"Her love for you, Ben. That's what saved you. Not some plastic pony. Her love for you. I never knew until I saw you give the doll head to Collins, and even then, she was too powerful. You cannot imagine the power a young girl's love for her father wields. The power of love, especially in the face of death, is more powerful than any force in existence. Even death cannot break love. Nothing can break love."
I am crying now. I know what she is saying is true, and she has tears in her eyes as well. "Julia...my little girl..."
"She never knew," Rainbow Dash says, gasping. "She never knew that she'd given you...that she'd made you...invincible..."
Invincible.
"Death does not stop for anything, Ben Wolfe. But...I cannot take you. Her...her love is...is..."
The pegasus breaks down in tears. I am a waterfall of emotion, and I cannot control myself. Before I know what I am doing, my arms are locked around her body, my tears mixing with hers, and we are crying, embraced.
I embrace Death. She welcomes me with open arms.
"I cannot...I will not...take you from your daughter, Ben Wolfe. But...you will give her a good life. A meaningful life. You are her father. You..."
The light is fading. She is fading with it. I hear a low rumble, like thunder. Something pounds in my chest, and my fingers tingle. I am going. Leaving.
"I will."
She blinks. The world shatters and reforms, and suddenly, my life is over.
"...Contact! South, up two floors in the green apartment building!"
"Reloading!"
"Someone get more rounds for the SAW!"
"Zenith, this is Retriever, come in..."
"Hold him steady! Is the turniquet in place!"
"Affirmative, sir!"
"Hold the fucking thing steady, Jaydog! Hold the thing steady!"
"I'm tryin', Dex!"
"You Yanks ready t'lift out?"
"Bet your limey ass, man. EVERYONE! PULL OUT! Jaydog, Hazmat, get Wolfie onto the Puma pronto! The limeys'll cover your asses! Now MOVE!"
Hello, darkness, my old friend. The dawn has come to see your end.
I don't know why I am freestyling Simon & Garfunkel. Perhaps I am delirious, or perhaps my brain has been damaged.
But, impossibly, unbelievably, incredibly...
I am alive.
My eyes are open just a sliver, and I see the red fingers of dawn in the horizon, ready to tear away the night. Red also zips past me, billows in flowerlike pulses. Flashes of yellow and white blind me, and everything else is black. I can see only colors and hear only voices.
"Zenith, this is Retriever, Oscar is hurt bad, bu still kicking. Ready for droprun, over."
A crackle of static. "Copy, Retriever, Thunderbolts are inbound. ETA 10 minutes. Get your boys outta there."
"Solid copy, Zenith. See you back at base."
I feel myself leave the ground and push forward. Shadowy figures are standing over me. I hear a rhythmic whuping sound, the sound of helicopter rotors.
I am alive.
"Collins! You need any 5.56?"
"Negative! I've got enough!"
"Bloody fuck, he looks bad!"
"Talk about it later, Churchill, just get him secured!"
"FUCK! The G36 jammed!"
"Take mine! Just keep shooting!"
Because I could not stop for death...
I read that somewhere. It was a poem. Who wrote it? Whitman? Thoreau?
I feel a sharp pain in my arm, and a few seconds later my mind is free and careless. Probably morphine, or something, but hey, I don't care, I feelgood.
"We're off!"
"About goddamn time!"
"The others?"
"Chinook got 'em all out, Adam. We'll be back at Bagram in a jiffy. In the meantime, just sit back and watch the fucking fireworks..."
I can't hear anything else. The voice echoes in my head. Then blackness usurps my vision, and I am bathing in a darkened void.
Dickinson. It was Emily Dickinson who said that...
I am awake. Again.
Bright light, brighter than any light I've ever seen, fills my eyes, then fades away as the room around me begins to fall together. Painfully bright.
What is it with bright lights? They hurt me, burn me...
Burning...
I am alive.
I cannot speak. My eyes are the thinnest of slits out of which barely anything can be seen. I can't feel my legs. The only sound I hear is the ominous beeping of an EKG monitor.
So I'm in a hospital. Where? Bagram? Kabul? Maybe even...
"...Wolfe?"
That is the voice of Derek Frost. I know it is.
So I'm still in Afghanistan. And I'm alive.
"Wolfe! Wolfe, holy shit! He's awake! BEN'S AWAKE!"
Hurried footsteps. Gasps of relief and amazement. I see shapes in the darkness approach, only to be shunted back by the shape that I know is Derek Frost.
"GET THE DOC IN HERE! GET SOMEONE FUCKING IN HERE NOW!"
The shape turns to me. "Wolfe...oh, God, Benny...I'm so sorry, I fucked up...I shouldn't have let you come...what they did...I didn't..."
I want to speak, but my voice is shot. My whole body seems to have shut down. My heart beats slowly. My breathing is shallow. And yet...
Blackness. Total.
Hello, good friend. How've you been?
Then I'm awake again.
Sunlight shines through the window. My sight has returned. I can make out the distinct shapes of the IV rack to my left, coupled with the EKG monitor and a dozen other machines that look old, battered, and rusted. I am in a room of steel. It is very hot.
Back at Bagram.
And there they are, Frost and Collins. They see me awake, and they are overjoyed. Collins looks like shit and Frost looks like vomit. I'll bet both of them look better than I do.
"Toldja he'd be back 'n kickin'," Frost laughs. "How you doing, man?"
"..." Once again, my voice refuses to work. So I raise my hand and give them a sideways thumb.
"It's okay, Corporal," Collins says sheepishly. "The team here's fixed you up pretty well. It's just..."
"Well," Derek grunts. "Uh...your legs...they had to..."
I look and see why I can't feel my legs.
I don't have legs. Both have been amputated.
It is three days later.
They're telling me that I'm going home tomorrow. So're Derek and Adam.
I have no legs and I'm missing three fingers on my right hand. I'm blind in one eye, and the other has a permanent redness to it. I've got so much metal in me the TSA would rip me apart if I ever tried to fly commercially again. Plus my head hurts and I still can't speak properly. I guess I was screaming so much when the hotel's roof caved in that I burned out my vocal cords.
But I'm finally going home.
I'll get to see Julia.
The Boeing C-17A is waiting on the tarmac. It is dawn. The sky is bloody with newborn sunlight. Adam Collins has stopped me.
I'm starting to speak again, but the wheelchair is becoming a real pain in the ass, both figuratively and literally.
Adam's saying something. The roar of the Globemaster's engines drowns out his words.
But then he opens his hand.
It's Rainbow Dash's head, still caked in dried blood and fragmented from shrapnel.
He lays it in my palm and says something else. I've gone deaf.
I'm crying inside, but on the outside I've cried so much that there are no more tears for me to shed.
That will soon change.
Touchdown.
A cheer goes up inside the Boeing. I join in, my voice raspy and low. We slow to a halt on the tarmac at JFK. Frost and Collins, both dressed in casual fatigues, help me into my wheelchair. Frost looks more professional and well-rounded now that he's shaven and not covered in sand.
The doors open. A crowd is waiting at the far side of the tarmac.
In my mind's eye, I can already see them. But I yearn to feel them.
I am the last one off. Frost and Collins help me down the ramp of the C-17 and wheel me toward the crowd.
A cry of joy.
"DADDY!"
She bolts from the crowd, dressed in her pink sweatshirt and sweatpants. Her hair is longer and her face fuller, but she is still my Julia.
Suddenly, she's on me, and we are locked in embrace, father and daughter, our love pouring forth like a fountain.
Loren emerges with Michelle. She is crying, both at the sight of my broken body and at the sight of my alive body. Michelle barks and goes head over heels, tearing down the tarmac and stopping at the last second so as to not knock me over. Loren joins Julia in hugging me, and I kiss them both, my dried lips wet from my tears.
"Daddy..." Julia chokes, looking down. "You don't have legs."
"No, sweetie." I can barely speak. My heart is bursting. The sun is shining. I don't care anymore that I am half a man.
I am still a man.
Michelle is licking my face, going absolutely nuts at the return of her master. Frost and Collins wheel me out of the way of the other returning soldiers. Julia will not stop hugging me. I don't want her to. Loren is only a few feet behind, trying to collect herself.
As they wheel me toward the crowd, Julia looks up at me. "Did Rainbow Dash protect you, Daddy?"
At this, I cry even harder, so hard that Julia is confused. She thinks she upset me. I shake my head.
"You both did, Julia. You and Rainbow Dash...you both did. You saved Daddy's life, sweetie. You both did."
She is smiling, teary-eyed. The strain is too much. I lie back in my chair and feel the calming fingers of sleep. I know they will not mind if I close my eyes for a moment.
The last thing I see before I shut my eyes is the blue sky, and across it, an iridiscent rainbow, unwavering.