Chapter Two

It was not one event that broke Chris Davis, it was a culmination of events that subconsciously collected in his mind, and eventually he could not deal with all of them. It was having to shoot a boy who pulled out an AK-47 from his house and ran out into the road firing. It was looking at the peaceful expression on his face, as he laid in the middle of the road with blood flowing in stream-lets away from his body. It was the face of a Viet Cong soldier whose only recognizable feature was his detached arm. It was the image of turning to his right, only to see his friend lying on the ground bleeding from a hole in his chest. It was being the lone man to return from a patrol and having no human resemblance. It was the constant Death that slowly eroded through him. Chris Davis’ tolerance was higher than must, but nothing could stop it; it was inevitable.

It was a normal night, nothing unlike the other thirty three months he had spent in this hell hole. He had first watch. He scanned the vast ocean of darkness in front of him. Not looking at objects straight on, but peering at a thirty degree angle to be able to see the tidal pools of the vast ocean. He heard a rustling in the dense jungle in front of him. He peered down the sights of his M 16, and breathed. It was in an identical breath to this that had marked the last moments of so many lives, but this one would mark the end of his own.

It was the last inhale, half exhale, and held breath that Chris Davis would ever do. His thumb moved to the selector switch, placing it to full auto. He blinked his right eye and looked down the iron sight. He moved his rifle, pointing it at the sound in the jungle. When it stopped, he fired. He unloaded one full clip into the jungle in front of him. Thirty rounds out of 10,000 he fired would have a disastrous impact on him. Being almost dawn and with the other brothers waking, Chris sprang out of his foxhole and jogged down to see what loot he could find. The mess he found was horrid. It was a mother water buffalo. The tongue drooped out of its mouth, the eyes were glazed over, and the head was pointed up, perhaps in an effort to grab one more dying breath. The stomach was fully exposed. The legs shot off at the joints, but the baby was still there. Making a crude whining sound, as if to bring its mother back from the dead. This should have had no effect on Chris Davis. He had killed men, children, and certainly other animals. His eyes narrowed in anger, and the rest of the platoon awoke to the spirit crushing screams, and the sound the knife made when it slid into the body. No one knew why, Chris was an excellent soldier. Maybe he had seen enough, he had reached that point. Chris Davis may as well have died that day.

With only three months left, he lost it. Some will say that he was crazy all along, others will say it wall a facade just to go home, and some will say nothing at all, because they know what happened. They know that the mind cannot justify injustices forever. Each mind has a breaking point. Chris could only justify what he did, when he knew it was for good. He could justify his men dying, because he would tell him-self that he would save ten maybe twenty other good men. He could take lives, if it would lead to a strategic victory that would end all the chaos. It was when he could find no justification for what he did that he felt it. His eyes were the same iced over glaciers, and his face always maintained the same scowl, but it did effect him. The mother water buffalo was a wasted life, and for this Chris could find no justification. Or maybe it was the pain of a lost mother that was so familiar to Chris that threw him over the edge? No one will know, but we do know that something in Chris was forever broken.

Chapter One-Part Two

It was the image of his drunk father banging down the bedroom door to only find another man occupying the bed. --How much can we blame the women? That is not for me to decide. She had not received any true love in years from the old drunk veteran that she could not understand. She needed an outlet, and it leads us to this scene.-- With mumbled curses, the old starving patriot reached into his pocket and pulled out a stiletto. He jumped onto the bed and plunged it repeatedly into the two occupants. After about the the fourth or fifth plunge the screams stopped, but he did not. He plunged the blade into their bodies until there was nothing left of their faces. As the blood began to trickle down to the floor, the father put away the stiletto and walked out of the door, but not before to stop and look at his son and pat his head and give him a truly genuine smile. The boy stood there, until the pool of blood pricked his toes. He then simply turned and walked back to this bed and went back to sleep. It is this image that is forever imprinted on the mind of Chris Davis.

If you asked Chris Davis how he constantly put his life on the line, he would simply tell you that he is lucky. We can deceive our selves and pretend that Chris Davis was fighting for our freedom and our country. When it comes down to it, he was not. He’s fighting for the man on his left, and the man on the right. He did not fight for any big ideals; he fought for survival. Not for the survival of him-self, but for the survival of his brothers. He did not kill to stop the enemy, he killed for protection. Not to protect him-self, but for the protection of the soldiers on his left and right. He did not care if he lived or died, he only cared that he was honorable. If he died protecting what he loved the most, then so be it. If he was left bleeding on an open field, he would be happy to protect what means the most to him.

Chris Davis had seen men snap. When they had seen enough atrocities, they just snapped. Something in their mind broke, there is no medical term for it, but it happened to too many good men. While on leave, he had seen fellow soldiers digging foxholes in their front yards and setting up a perimeter. He had seen soldiers hold down their wives by knife point. He had seen a man calmly take out his pistol and point it to his face and pull the trigger. All within a second. He could remember looking at he partially decapitated man, with a gun loosely held in the limp hand. Every night he would hear the screams of soldiers, not yelling, but screaming. Their souls would truly shriek and let out unheard sounds on unheard frequencies. These screams were not an annoyance, they pierced the minds and hearts of the listeners, adding to the hell that they already lived in. Chris head these screams and would try to ignore them. He never thought that they would have a great effect on them.

Chapter One-Part One

Chapter One

Chris Davis was a corporal who had spent five years serving his country. By now he should have been a sergeant, but a mishap with an officer at the local bar prevented that. He had been overseas for fifteen months, and he was ready to go home. He missed hanging out friday nights at Dave’s and playing baseball all day long, after all he was just a kid and had never learned the adult way of life. But what he most was the people, all of them, even the ones he hated. He could still picture them crisp in his mind. He remembered events as if he had never left home. At nights he would lay down and imagine what all his friends were doing back in the States. To him, the people had not changed, and we hope that he will not have to find out how things really are.

None of these feelings were ever displayed to his fellow brothers in arms. To them, he could very well kill all the people he knew and walk way from it with out blinking. He had gained this reputation from killing the most enemies in the division, but rumors were he had the most confirmed kills currently in the U.S. military. Command would not give him a break, because they needed him out there, and Chris did not mind this, because it was what his whole life was devoted to. This was his second combat tour, and he had seen it all. His old brothers in arms, all killed, blended into one dying image in his mind. However, It was not an image of the war that disturbed him the most, it was an equally as bloody murder that took place on domestic soil that bothered him.

Prologue

Grime and dirt covered his once youthful face. Each layer accounting for some gruesome scene he witnessed or took part in. He was a young man of no more than nineteen, but his eyes were those of an old-troubled man. His eyes were turbulent blue oceans, forever hardened into a sea of ice by the images that were passed through them. His combat fatigues had not been changed in months. Even though he was promised a hot meal once a week, his fingers had become accustomed too scraping off cold food from the bottom of his C-Rats. His hands had taken on red aura, and he was infamous for this. He was one tough and desensitized son-of-a-bitch, and for this he was proud. His name was Chris Davis, and he was just another tragedy of war.

He never knew the why, what, or reason. He only knew the how. How to break down his rifle in under a minute, how to pull the trigger to hit a target at 500 yards, how to take his KA-BAR and plunge it into an enemy’s chest, but most importantly he knew how to kill with no inhibition. Chris thought he was independent, but in fact he was not. He was just another soldier brainwashed to do whatever he was told. He would call him-self a patriot, while most others may call him a monster. It is men like Chris Davis that we owe our lives to, but these men get forgotten and turn into mere numbers.