War Games

Alejandro was yet to return, and Diego could only hear rockets. 

He sat among the roots of a kapok tree, hidden by its massive trunk and the dark foliage that swarmed every spare inch of the jungle floor. His toes fidgeted in the black mud as he rhythmically dug his thumbnail under each finger nail in time with the distant whistle of projectiles. They sounded like curassow birds— a long, keening cry that pitched higher and higher until it was broken by thunder. Diego imagined it exploding, its song replaced by smoke and black feathers.

When he was quite small, he’d cried at the sound, and ran for his mother. Now he simply jabbed under his fingernails as hard as he could, ruining them. The nails now grew crooked. This was how he’d learned to suffer through the terrible noise. The exercises only lasted an hour or two, though it always felt like days. Drills were not supposed to be dangerous— so long as you stayed on the west bank of the river. 

Alejandro was well beyond the bank. The hospital was two hours away, and it had already been a day. He’d told Diego to wait for him. “I’ll be back before sunup, before they do anymore drills,” he’d promised, then grinned. “You make sure the river doesn’t go nowhere, or I can’t find my way home.”

Diego swore he would wait for him. His heart clenched when his friend waded the shallows to the other side, vanishing into the viridian jungle.

 You are a coward, he chastised himself as he crouched by the murky water, gripping his knees. Alejandro is going alone again, because you are too afraid. 

Alejandro was born brave. Heedless and wild, he’d chased away the wild dogs with sticks, and thrown himself into scraps with the older boys; he’d flung rocks at the armored trucks of the invasores, and cursed them to their faces. Even in birth, he entered the world with such a bellowing cry that the whole village shuttered their windows. “He came into this life shouting for justice,” Alejandro’s mother said once, “and he’s never stopped.”

Diego followed him into life a few days later. In all ways, he and Alejandro were brothers— there was nothing they did not do together. They shared their mothers’ homes and meals, played soldiers and rebels, split all their snacks and toys between them, and studied in the thatched schoolhouse run by the invasora who taught them English and math and how the invasores had come to liberate them. When Alejandro had been banned from school for swearing too often at the teacher, Diego would sneak out to join him, the two of them climbing trees while Alejandro hatched plans for escaping, for joining his brother with the rebel fighters in the south.

“You’ll come with me, yeah?” Alejandro had asked, lithely ascending. “We’ll kick these bastards out for good. Be heroes.” Diego huffed as he fought to keep up, broader and heavier than his friend. 

“Course,” he’d answered. There was no other answer, though Diego lacked his friend’s conviction. He was not a hero like Alejandro. The soldiers frightened him. Their rifles were black as tar, and the smoke of their weapons stung his eyes; they moved with such ease, like an animal without a natural predator, unafraid of the scurrying bodies of the village, content to lean against their trucks and leer at the girls walking to the schoolhouse, or ruin a poor laborer’s day by demanding documents, initiating a detainment process that could last hours to days to weeks. Still, Diego could not conceive of a world without Alejandro. If Alejandro wanted to fight, Diego must find it in himself to do so. “You are too much his shadow,” his own mother had warned. “Be careful not to follow that boy into trouble.” 

She needn’t have worried; Diego could not even find it in himself to cross the river. Alejandro had entered the free-fire zone, where the soldiers simulated the guerrilla tactics of their enemies. Miles upon miles of land had been carved out for their guns and gasses, blocking the mountain paths down to the city, cutting off access to its banks and hospitals. The invasores never bothered to justify their choice, only promising that any civilian caught in the zone was liable to be gunned down on sight. When the villagers complained, the local captain blithely responded by offering them rations of medical supplies and access to their army medic, who only dropped by the village maybe once or twice a month. 

Diego stood and stared across the sluggish river. Somewhere in the wilderness, Alejandro might be injured, or worse. The image of his friend’s crumpled body pressed his mind, prickling inside his skull. Their mothers must be looking for them— but how could he go back, and what would he say? 

Alejandro went to get medicine for Maya, and he hasn’t come back. I let him go alone. I let him die alone. 

His fingernails were bleeding. Perhaps he shouldn’t worry. Alejandro had made the journey before, hadn’t he? He’d saved Diego’s life. 

Diego screwed his eyes shut. He knew what he must do, but his knees quaked. 

The screams of missiles had died. The jungle sang again in buzzes and caws. There was a painful acidity in the air, making him itch. Why must they practice with real weapons? Why so close to our home? 

“It’s to make us fear them,” Alejandro once said. “So we don’t fight back.”

It worked. Diego had seen what their weapons could do, years ago when the invasores first settled in the valley below, giving the village a glimpse into the world of their camps. Tents sprouted where trees had been leveled, their trunks cut into posts that had been packed into the sodden earth. Diego remembered the day he first witnessed the cruelty of bullets, the shrieks of women and children watching from the mountainside as the soldiers hung bodies on the posts, corpses of men limp and half-rotten. For hours, they used the prisoner’s bodies as target practice. Limbs flew, skulls cracked, bodies convulsed as if still alive. One of the few English-speaking laborers in the camp returned to the village, lips dry as he recounted what he’d heard. 

“They want their new soldiers to be familiar with the impact of the bullet on the body,” he’d said in a low voice. “They do not want men who flinch.”

The memory clawed at Diego, trying to drag him away from the water. You will end up like them, it promised. You will be in pieces. You will be dead. 

Yet, if it weren’t for Alejandro, he already would be— and now, his friend needed him. 

Diego waded into the river. 

Cool and mild, the water coaxed him across, shallow and forgiving. Diego tried not to think too hard about where he was going, or how he was meant to sneak through the miles of territory that lie ahead. He thought of Alejandro, unafraid of speaking his mind, of endangering himself for others. He thought of little Maya, sick with the flu that once gripped Diego, fevered and whimpering. 

Crawling up the opposite bank, he kept low, beginning to shuffle through the jungle as quietly as he could manage. He knew the path to the city well, but kept his distance— he needed the jungle for cover. The humid air kept his skin and clothes damp. Struggling to breathe through his terror, his ears were perked for the slightest snap of a twig or rustle of bushes. 

Please, please, he begged in his mind. Be close, Alejandro. Be alive. 

And if his friend was dead? What would that mean for him? What would he do then? Diego tried to imagine a world where he could not follow Alejandro, could not nod along to his proclamations, could not cling to his visions of the future. Who was Diego, without Alejandro? 

You are too much his shadow. 

Shaking so much he could barely stand, Diego began to crawl, the lines of his hands mapped with soil and blood as he kept moving. It was almost like playing rebels with Alejandro, who claimed to be mimicking the tactics his brother supposedly used on the far off battlefields, though Diego wasn’t sure how he’d know anything about the war front.

“We gotta crawl so we stay completely out of sight, then ambush from the darkness,” Alejandro declared. So they ruined the knees of their trousers scrambling through the brush, jumping out to spook unsuspecting passerbys. They practiced their aim with plastic guns, writhing on the ground when the enemy invasoro was shot. 

“We gotta be ready for the real thing,” Alejandro said. Diego nodded sagely. 

What foolish boys they were! Playing war like it was a game, like the invasores spraying bullets into dead men, pitching poison into the wilderness for sport. Did Alejandro truly find this terror thrilling? Diego swallowed a knot in his throat. 

Minutes— hours?— dragged by as he crept through the jungle. Sometimes he’d hear something and freeze for a few agonizing seconds; like a rodent hiding from a hawk, he scuttled under the giant taros and shield ferns at the slightest noise. 

“Diego?” 

Diego choked back a scream. Sallow-skinned and muddy, Alejandro laid in the hollow of a tree, clutching the torn mess of flesh that was his arm, camouflaged by his own filth, the dirt on his cheeks streaked with traces of tears. Diego scrambled over, voice tight, every ache in his body flooded with relief.  

“You’re alive,” he breathed. “I can’t believe it— I thought—” Diego could not say it. 

“I shouldn’t be,” Alejandro said. The words were slurred, and his eyes did not quite follow Diego. “Something… exploded… when I was coming back. Medicine’s in my bag, you gotta get it to my sister…”

Blood soaked Alejandro’s shirt, scarlet spots peppering across this chest. Shrapnel. 

“I’m gonna get you home,” Diego said. His vision had sharpened. A strange sense of clarity possessed him. Diego pulled off his shirt, then reached for Alejandro’s arm. “Let me see.”

Alejandro offered his arm, and Diego wrapped the wound tightly, trying not to dwell on the wretched distortion of skin and fabric. Alejandro’s breaths were shallow and irregular, his eyes glassy. 

“We gotta move, Ale.” Diego’s throat tightened. “Can you move?”

“I can try. I can try anything.” Alejandro leaned forward with a grimace. 

“Good. You gotta follow me, alright? We stay close, we stay low. Like we’ve practiced.” Diego offered a weak smile. Alejandro returned it. 

“Didn’t think I’d die here,” he murmured. “Thought the man who would kill me would mean to do it. Not just by accident.”

“Shut up.” Diego shook his head, snatching Alejandro’s satchel from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder. “You aren’t dead. Now, we gotta move.”

The two of them shuffled through the jungle, the sun sinking, dipping the greenery into an inky darkness. Alejandro struggled to keep up, and it wasn’t long before Diego held his side, arm over his shoulder, supporting him as they hurried. The injury made his friend clumsy. The foliage snapped and shuddered as they staggered along. Diego breathed soft prayers: Save Alejandro, save Maya, save us all. 

Distantly, there was the petrifying crack of a bullet, and he almost soiled himself. The instinct to halt, to cower, was overwhelming— but Diego grit his teeth and kept on going, dragging Alejandro those last agonizing steps into the river. They crossed to the west bank, and finally collapsed. 

Though nothing felt sure at the time, Alejandro would survive the night, and many more; they would live much longer lives than felt possible. They would see a freer world, a world where war was only a game for little boys. Alejandro would tell the story of that night to his grandchildren, hair gray, skin pocketed with scars.

“Your uncle is a real hero,” he’d say, “bravest man I know.”