Tales of the Forgotten Read Online Free Page A

and a
rifle. He didn’t own much now in this new life.
    Brad
sat on his bunk and looked around the room. Some of the soldiers were still up,
but it wasn’t like before in the barracks in Bremmel. There wasn’t any
horseplay, no playing of cards; the men had to keep quiet for fear of luring in
the primals. No one was reading books; the guardhouse was too dimly lit at
night for that. Laptops and game systems were a thing of the past. They now
survived in a quiet solitude. Brad lay back on his rack watching the ceiling,
wondering how things might be different at home, his real home. Maybe it was time to leave.

 
    3.
     
     
     
    Brad
woke to the stench of the cooking Afghan slop and his stomach turned. If there
was one thing they had plenty of, it was the cans of mystery meat. They had
found nearly ten full train cars of the stuff. Nobody enjoyed it, but at least
they wouldn’t starve. He just couldn’t get used to the taste and the greasy
coating it left in one’s mouth after eating it. Lately it was breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. The soldiers had handed over most of the real food to the families,
but occasionally they would have their meals augmented with rice and beans
collected in the daily scavenge runs.
    Brad
sat up in his bed and grabbed his shower kit. Standing and stretching, he moved
out to the communal showers they had built behind his new barracks.
Miraculously they still had running water. Henry, his young driver with
aspirations of being an engineer, said the water came from a well. The pumps
were powered by solar cells that were installed on the roof. Brad really didn’t
care how all of it worked, as long as it did. He put the young soldier in
charge of facilities, and he had done wonders in turning the place around.
Henry’s main pride and joy had been the solar water heater: water heated by the
sun. It had made him a bit of a hero around camp.
    Brad
found Sean, the SEAL team chief, on his way to the showers. Sean was heavily
bearded now, as most of them were.
    “You
have an answer for me on that offer yet?” Sean asked Brad with a smile.
    “I
do. I think you’re right and I want in, but let me break it to Turner and the
men first. I don’t know how they will react,” Brad answered.
    “Fair
enough Brad, but be quick about it, we plan to leave at first light tomorrow.
We have a lot of preparations to make,” replied Sean.
    Sean
left him alone and Brad continued on to the showers. They weren’t much, just
some piping shrouded with some heavy canvas. But it was enough, and he quickly
found himself enjoying his solitude in the hot water. Even though they had all
been warned to be brief in the showers, he took a couple of extra minutes
today. He reluctantly exited the hot water, knowing it might be his last hot
shower for a while. Brad gathered his things and returned to the barracks to
ready himself for another long day.
    After
dressing in a clean uniform, Brad walked over to the soldiers’ fire pit behind
the guardhouse. He found a place on the large crate converted into a table and
took a seat. One of the Afghans who worked the soldiers’ kitchen nodded to him
and brought him a steaming bowl of the slop, which Brad accepted with a forced
smile. Turner, the unit’s platoon sergeant, took notice of Brad and placed his
own bowl in a wash basin, then walked over and took a seat next to him. Turner
took a small tobacco box out of his jacket pocket, and laid it across his lap.
    “So
I was talking to Brooks this morning; he told me you were considering leaving
with them,” Turner said while fumbling with a scrap of paper and trying to roll
a cigarette.
    “Still
messing with those cigarettes I see. You know you’ll be out soon, and
withdrawal is going to kick your ass,” answered Brad.
    “Nahh,
I won’t run out, the Afghan boys have been bringing me tons of this stuff, and
one of them found a rail car topped off with it. I’ll run out of paper before
tobacco, and then I’ll just switch to a