That day, I still remember. We were told it was a small camp. I wish it were. It was an ambush. I stepped, weighing each step before it landed. My hands firm around my rifle as my gaze shifted from the bushes to the canopy that hid the moon. It was glowing like a fabled cedar. I walked. My team was around me, scattering to search and then returning to formation. I looked at Emma. I know I did, and then she turned as a bullet tore through her skull. Our grips tightened, our eyes moving beneath our goggles, tearing through the grim night. There was nothing, at least nothing we could see. I remember how, one after another, my mates fell onto piles of rotten leaves and frozen soil. I kept my stance. I knew this was nothing. They had thrown me into battles worse, battles with Gods, I told myself. Though I knew it was worse. At least I could see the Gods. Here, not so much. I blinked, and a bullet brushed my ear. I fired. At what? I didn't know. I just did. I emptied the last of my bullets. Silence followed. And then,
bang!
A bullet tore through my head. I remember seeing red fluid drip, clouding my eyes, before everything went black. No, it wasn't black. It was just nothing. No color, not at all. I fell. I felt warmth in my head, but only for a minute. Then it was cold. The soil was wet. The leaves were wet. The gear I wore was worn through, clinging to my skin. I couldn't breathe. I just couldn't. I lay there. I remember counting minutes and hours and maybe days. Any time now, I thought, they would arrive and take us home, or to a hospital. I knew they would. Wouldn't they? Would they? They never did. Neither the Foundation nor anyone else. I lay there. The stars must have been twinkling above. I couldn't see them, but I knew. The sun rose like a bowl of fire, its heat pouring on my skin as the night's cold faded. It became warmer and warmer and warmer, more than I could bear.
A sudden wind fell over my face. It was warm. It came from above. Then I felt the weight over my chest. It felt like my dog back home, and for a moment I knew it. But it wasn't. It didn't have four legs. Only two. It had a beak. I didn't see it, but I felt it as it scraped and dug into my flesh. I didn't cry. I couldn't. But even if I could, I knew I wouldn't have, because I was numb, and it didn't bother me much anymore.
I didn't realize it before, but I was lying headfirst. A worm entered through my nose. Then another. Then one more. There were hundreds of them. It kept on like this for days, maybe months. I remember how, bit by bit, the dust settled over me, and the dry yet moist leaves covered me. I was told that I would feel lighter when I die. I didn't. I felt heavier, with weight pressing down on me every day. The bipedal beaked things, then a dog, maybe, and insects crawling all over me. Then the leaves and the soil. They hid me from the sun, caressing me, engulfing me.
Then maybe a few years passed. I forgot who I was and what I was supposed to do. I just was there. I just existed. Then one day, I moved slowly. At first, I cleared the soil, then the rotting leaves. Around them, I began to stand. But each leaf - I could feel it - felt heavier than it should have been, like carrying a fragment of a long-dead golem. It was tiring and slow, but now, at least, I could stand. I would, I thought. It was suffocating, I knew, though I couldn't breathe, but believe me, it was. Yet it didn't stop me. Nothing did. I would stand once again. I would meet my wife and son. I could do it. I knew it.
I burst from the pile of soil and dead leaves. For the first time in months, maybe years, I felt the sun shine on me. I felt the breeze wrap around me. I was back. I was back. Now I would go back to my family, my son, my wife. I pulled myself out, but I couldn't. The ground took hold of me. It gripped my feet. I was stuck. The sun still shone on me. I felt its warmth. But the forest wouldn't let me go. The ground wouldn't let me go. God wouldn't let me go. I would have cried there if I could. But that was the point. I couldn't. My eyes weren't there. Perhaps they would grow soon enough, I thought. They didn't. They never did. I was in a forest, deprived of my senses, stranded. Yet I felt everything. The critters crawling and digging into me. This time, it hurt. It hurt a lot. Let me grow my hands and recover my strength, then I'll show these maggots who I am, I used to think. But this never happened. I was buried, yet I was not. I was dead, but again, not so much. I used to laugh at this, or at least I would have if I could. I waited… for what? I'm not sure.
Then one day it rained, and rained, and rained for days. I felt each drop on me, five hundred thousand of them. I felt that counting seconds wouldn't be enough. Then I counted rains: two, then three, then five, and then twenty. And I still didn't feel my eyes. I couldn't see. I couldn't smell.
But I felt. I felt something greater.
Now the sun shone longer on me. There were so many drops that I couldn't keep count of them. The breeze was there all day, brushing through my tender hairs or at least the closest thing that I had to hair. I felt more free. No now I felt the ground gripping me harder too, harder than it had when I was a corpse. Thirty rains passed. I even grew my hands, many of them growing like branches, but they couldn't move, just like me. I waited. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three rains. And one day, I felt a hand. Its warmth spread across my hardened skin. It was warm, but different. Not that of a monkey, not a bear, not a critter. It was… human. Yes. Human. The thought came slowly, like something dragged up from the bottom of a very deep place. Human. I was human. I had been human. I had a wife. A son. A name. I tried to remember it. I couldn't. The hand remained against me. Warm. Familiar. And somewhere inside me, something remembered that it was supposed to mean something. I just couldn't remember what.