Siren Song

Time to Wake Up

 "Kalle. For fuck's sakes! Wake up, you twat."

I briefly recall a well-endowed woman slinking towards me across my bed, but the rest is history. My cheek was on the floor of our regiment's sleeping quarters, and the rest of me was tangled in the bed sheets from the top bunk. Cameron loosed the one bit of sheet keeping me aloft. I doubt ever wanting to strangle him more than in that moment and groaned when my feet hit the hard tiles.

"Ah, Kalle. You look like an all-time low. The floor can't replace a woman."

"I wouldn't describe you as particularly pretty, either, Cam. 'Specially from this angle. How do you cajole women into your bed?"

"Get your gear on, Bitch. It's deployment time!" he chanted. He was way too excited about something; dying most likely.

My boots were black with caked-on mud and shit, and my fatigues felt their name.

I'm not a bad soldier; quite the opposite. Don't think I'm a bad person, either. But Christ I loathe making my bed, wake-up calls, and sleeping in a uniform. Cameron never seems to mind, well, anything. A very resourceful lad, high energy at any hour. He sleeps with an idling motor in his chest but I'd be more restless if my brothers weren't as close.

"Get your suit on, Bitch! We're going for a morning hike on your favorite terrain," he said, smacking me between my shoulder blades and grinning like a loon.

I doubt loons really grin but this one looks like an idiot. Fuck, I hate the snow.

I sighed. I was not fond of complaining even internally. Just a bad morning habit I'd never broken. Attempting interest and optimism I asked, "which mountains are we traversing, Cameron?" He heard apathy.

"The mountains," he said ominously. "We're the next surveillance team. They think there's something up there. I guess it's messing with communication signals, or wildlife populations, or some other geek problem. Did you not go to the lab session last night?"

I shook my head, "last night they had me on patrols. I'm a quick learner; just fill me in."

"Okay, well, there were freaky sound signatures all over the monitors. Like seventeen different monitors on the range were all picking up the anomaly and the higher-ups requested this regiment be relocated temporarily. And, dude, no joke those signatures were weird. They're well-placed so as not to conflict, designed to ignore wind gusts and snow disturbances. All they do is pick up organic activity."

"How 'bout geological activity? Earthquakes, eruptions, avalanches? I bet we're going to show up and get swallowed up between sliding tectonic plates. The mountain range is so disturbing because it's literally giving up," I reply. Christ, still a dick thirty minutes into consciousness.

Cameron shrugged. Definitely ignoring my logic composed of piss and vinegar. I stopped packing for just a moment and Cameron smacked the back of my skull for motivation.

"Keep moving, Bitch!" He grinned. We started marching out to the deployment deck for the aircrafts. The whirring rotor blades waited to take our team of twenty-four to the base in the Forgotten Range. I felt like defending my hesitation as defensive protocol and rational thought, but Cameron read my mind and jumped the gun.

"You gotta stop thinking sometimes, Kalle. It's bad for your survival rating. Think like a soldier. Soldiers serve, so stop resisting that; forget thoughts sometimes." The look on his face was dumb and he seemed steadfast and calm in his resolve. If he could survive like a mindless hull so be it, but I barely passed meditation training. My head resolved to be perpetually revved. So be it.

Collecting my words, I reset the conversation, "all I meant was...why are we a 'new' team? What happened to the last team? Aren't we just meeting them at the base and dismissing them as usual?"

"Oh. Well, I dunno. They've probably just been out there too long and the heads want to cycle teams in and out. Maybe they went snow blind and left early!" Cameron laughed deep and booming at his own sour joke. My mind reeled over the lack of protocol.

Inside the transport helicopter we strapped ourselves in like old pros. The rotor blades began to pick up speed, the hatch was sealed, and the journey began. Looking around, all I could see was padded metal framework and soldiers prepped, trained, and hopefully ready for another mission. The Forgotten Mountain Range spanned across the entire northern perimeter of Canada into the arctic zones beyond. It served as a treacherous highway connecting the broken pieces of islands tossed in the Arctic's direction. However, sometimes the ocean passed through the spaces between each mountain and it was every man's death to attempt a crossing of those waters.

They showed us footage in training – sobering footage – of brazen soldiers who felt strong and invincible with specialized equipment to protect us in that environment. Men and women died in this footage. My foster sister, Ani's, husband amongst them. The lesson was supposed to be that no degree of expensive equipment and military training can prepare a person for that terrain. Your strongest asset is sound judgment and an infallible sense of self-preservation.

I was home, visiting Ani and her parents when Stephen disappeared and I was the first to see Ani's typically bright expression fall for good. She denied the information for a while, but eventually accepted her loss as they all do. After I witnessed that video, and suffered the look of betrayal, pain, anger, and fear playing out in Stephen's eyes before he and the other male and female soldiers tumbled into the mountain's ocean below, I could not accept that it was not all unintentional.

No special operations team of that caliber would succumb to pride of that degree. And no videographer would let them die like that. Too staged...deliberate...too perfectly excusable as human carelessness.

Instead of covering the whole thing up, they showed it to us and made an example of what disobedience and personal justice might lead to. They trained us harder, and apparently we were finally ready. I wish I could tell Ani how I knew her husband had died, but it wasn't fitting for a soldier; it wasn't fair to his memory. This aircraft felt like a cargo hold for bodies on their way to a funeral in which they might be invited to participate. Eventually, the rotor's noises faded above us and all that remained was silence muffled by heavy breathing and the dizzying thrum of hearts on adrenaline.

We were reaching the correct altitude and strapping on our oxygen masks. The lights went out and the crew disappeared inside the cockpit, while we basked under the red glow of emergency warning lights signaling exits and the danger of opening such exits. Finally, came the sleeping gas and a long sleep. Brothers in the arms of harnesses before our last mission. I was not a man of faith, nor a soldier looking to find it, but if I could pray it would have been in that moment before dreamlessness.