The Super Soldiers in…

BRING THE BOYS BACK HOME

By Paolo Santucci

Chapter 1: Sarah Wilde
Millennium Bridge, London, U.K.

It’s such a beautiful day, I think it’s gonna be a wonderful spring. I’m tempted to stay here on the bridge, watching the world go by while I enjoy the breeze. Too bad, I can’t: a call from Major Joseph Hauer is not an ordinary thing … actually it’s never happened before! Who knows, maybe he is finally coming to terms with the need to have a life beyond work.

There he is, I can see him. A figure like that catches your eye. He’s leaning against the railing looking at a girl playing with her dog on the shore. What’s he thinking about? Maybe he’s thinking about his family, maybe he is wondering what kind of people they were, or whether he ever had a dog. How would I react if I had to live without my memories?

The last few years must have been terribly hard for Joe. He woke up in a cryogenic capsule and found out that the government had faked his death, erased all his memories, and then used him as a guinea pig. Then they re-recruited him, just to sell all the team to a private company when the Cabinet Office cut off their funds. To top it off, the bloke who ran the company tried to dissect them to discover how to create other super soldiers like them! Of course at the end he saved himself. He, Owen and Dalton saved themselves. But Guvnor didn’t, and Joe took his death really badly. It was a surprise for me.

Then there was September 11. The government, once again full of money on arms and wanting to have super soldiers. So they used him again! After all, they have built him for this purpose. So first it was Afghanistan, then Iraq. He did not even flinch: the queen and country called, Major Joseph Hauer answered. And he killed as commanded, as you would expect from a weapon to do.

How can you fall in love with a man like that? Yet I did it! I have even become a war correspondent, to be not too far away from him. But I haven’t said anything to him. I don’t mean to say absolutely nothing. I’m sure he feels the same, it’s pretty clear. Sadly, Joe has the emotional maturity of a teenager! Perhaps it’s because he has no memories, or maybe because he only knew fighting since he woke up. I don’t know.

Well, let’s hear what …

“Hi, Sarah. You’re late,” he says without even looking back at me.

“Dammit, Hauer! How the hell have you done that?”

“With what I do for a living, I shouldn’t be alive if I were easy to be taken by surprise!” he answers laughing.

“So, why you asked me to come here? I didn’t think it was your kind of place.”

“You didn’t? What do you think would be my kind?” he asks running a hand through his hair to accommodate the usual lock falling over his eyes. “Come on, answer a trench, I dare you!”

We start to laugh. It’s funny, and it is strange: for once we can speak without starting a fight in five minutes.

“You know what I mean, Joe. It’s … let’s say it’s unusual, to see you doing something ordinary.”

“Yeah, I know! You’re right,” he answers leaning again on the railing. “I’m just back now from a week of intensive training with SHIELD and Captain America. We also talked a lot. You know, the things Cap said, when I found out what the government had done to me … those words helped me keep going. Too bad I hadn’t the chance to talk to him again, however this new Captain America is a good bloke, and a wise man too. He reminds me of the old Cap in many ways. Anyway … he has placed great emphasis on the importance of having a private life, doing ordinary things, even if only in the name of your mental sanity,” he ends the phrase turning to me and smiling. I don’t know why, but that smile fills me with sadness. Yet I should be happy, he’s finally speaking reasonably … and he’s sharing his feelings with me as he hasn’t done since when he used to send me mails from the front.

“Joe … I …”

“Sarah …” and his face moves closer to mine.

“Joe … ya’re such a wanker! How many times have I told you the same thing? But if bloody Captain America says it it’s gospel, right?!”

He frowns. I know that look, one of the usual arguments is about to start.

Gunshots! We hear gunshots and people screaming. Joe turns off and is already running.

I’m no longer in his thoughts.

Chapter 2: Owen Llewelyn
Tuscany Countryside, Italy

My daughters used to say “My father died in war.”

Then it turned into: “My father died in war and my mother remarried with an asshole!”

But sometimes life takes not only unexpected, but also unbelievable turns, and my daughters had to say: “My father is not dead, he has become a seven foot tall monster.”

It’s damn hard when you hear the people you love most in the world say something like that.

But life is truly amazing. So I’ve heard what I never thought I would hear: “My father is a hero.”

It ain’t true … but they don’t want to listen.

I was just a cook of the Welsh Guards. My unit was operating in a war zone when a bomb hit us. They rescued me, I was mortally wounded but for me the pain had just begun. Surgeries. Countless surgeries. Experiments. Unable to move, even to moan, but not anaesthetised. They left me feel everything … those bastards! Damn Sir Marcus, he and his obsession with super soldiers. It wasn’t enough the work he had done on Hauer, Dalton and others, on behalf of the government. No, he wanted his own private super soldiers. Seven foot tall monsters with superhuman strength, cybernetic eyes, and – above all – fully programmable. Without Dalton and Hauer I would still be like a zombie.

A bucket of water brings me back to the present. It’s Kelly. Marie is laughing in the pool.

“Hey, kid … a little respect for your father!” I growl standing up.

Kelly screams and dives. I follow her cannonball into the pool. What the hell, they asked for it! Marie runs away in the garden. I grab Kelly and lift her above my head, she is in the throes of a convulsive laughter. I load her on my shoulder and throw myself in pursuit of her sister, who is already on the other side of the house. We spend the rest of the afternoon this way, just playing!

After the guerrilla in the garden, the girls go for a walk while I prepare dinner. In the last few years, between Afghanistan and Iraq, I’ve done nothing but fight. I had just begun to establish a relationship with my daughters when I had to leave them again. But now, finally, we have been recalled from the front.

Having some free time again I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of cooking and decided to open a restaurant. In the meantime I’ve asked for an off-period and I arranged a trip to Spain, France, Italy and Greece, to improve my skills in international cuisine. A perfect opportunity to spend some quality time with the girls. I’ve been in hell, but life has been no bed of roses for them too. They had taken a turn for the worse … car stealing and everything else … fortunately, these problems are behind us.

I’ll be sorry when we’ll have to leave this house. I’ve invested all my savings in the restaurant, but … moving here, to live with the girls and … and Joanne, this would make me a happy man. Unfortunately Joanne has a new husband now, and she made it clear that she definitely doesn’t want live with a monster like me.

A monster.

“My father is a seven foot tall monster!”

A man.

“My father is a hero!”

A cook.

Focus on what you do, Owen, or you will burn off dinner. Stop thinking about it, think about all the good you can give to the world and to your daughters instead. Monsters don’t cook delicacies such as these. This is the work of an artist.

I hear Marie’s voice coming from the other room: “Dad … we are … oh blimey … I’m smelling …”

“It’s called cinghiale in salmì, luv.”

“… It’s delicious … but … what the fuck dad, if you keep going on like this, we’ll put on weight as cows!” I can’t help laughing, Kelly is definitely not my little princess, anymore.

“Wash your hands, you bunch of dockers! In five minutes the mess is on the table!”

“My father ain’t dead.”

No, I just started living.

Chapter 3: Alec Dalton
Temple, London, U.K.

It’s awesome, you know?! I mean, Alec’s like both Gandhi and Brad Pitt at the same time! He’s really, really cool, but he’s also so deep … he has done lots of thinking and understood lots of things. He now wants to help the rest of mankind so he decided to set up a new religion, a religion for the new millennium! A religion free from all those constraints and prohibitions, a religion with the human being at its centre.

I can’t believe he chose me … it was the best night of my life! He does all this new age crap: meditation, yoga, tai chi … but also that tantric stuff like Sting, he can do amazing things!

… like reading minds, but there’s no need to tell her about it. I’m sorry to lie here pretending to sleep while invading her mind, but I’ve already found myself in bed with a ninja killer twice in the last months. I can’t let myself be caught off guard, I must have seriously pissed someone off.

I wonder if it’s worthwhile to keep carrying on this kind of life. Everything was much simpler when I lived on the Thai/Cambodian border. The government thought me dead on a mission, I was free. The Buddhist monks, who found me dying, healed me – in many ways – and taught me so much. They gave me peace.

I learned how to control the drugs produced by the artificial organ implanted to replace my appendix and how to use them to reach deep meditative states. So I understood the true potential of the human mind and I started the experiments of telepathy and astral travelling. The monks had even started to worship me.

Then came Hauer, along with Sarah, looking for answers about his past. Sir Marcus’ new super soldiers were chasing him. He wanted Hauer killed so that our story didn’t came out in the newspapers. When they attacked us and started killing the monks, I had to betray my vow of non-violence.

I had to come home, I was now a danger for the monks. Here everything became frantic and complicated. Violent. We did nothing but jumping from one mission to another, from one war to another. I wanted to start a new religion, to free people from spiritual old stuff that keeps them from really evolving, however now I find myself with a sort of cult, a bunch of blokes who are content with worshipping me and expect me to tell them what to do with their lives. They have turned me it into what I wanted to free them from.

Here it is so difficult to maintain a proper detachment from things, to maintain the right perspective. This life … it’s like being swallowed by quicksands, each day leaves me less at peace. I’m falling prey to the desires, everyday a little more. Every day I feel a new urge.

… I can learn from him … one day I might even get to his level of consciousness …

I involuntarily perceived these last thoughts of hers while she was falling asleep, but … they were what I needed right now, this time she’s teaching me something. So what I’m doing isn’t completely wrong. It’s not them who have changed me, I did it myself. It was my arrogance that prevented me from seeing. I’ve judged them, instead of trusting them. I have castled myself in the role of the teacher without understanding what they had to teach me.

It’s worth staying.

There is still hope.

Chapter 4: Joseph Hauer
South Bank, London, U.K.

Gunshots and screams. Terrorists? I leave Sarah behind and run towards the noise.

Everything is painted red.

Red. It is the stimulant drug produced by my genetically engineered organ.

Red. The adrenaline rushes like a wave through my veins, I hear its low rumble in my temples.

I see men in the distance, they’re armed with pistols and machine-guns and running away from a van overturned on its side. Five of them, untrained. They’re shooting to some approaching police cars.

One of the men sees me and shoots. One. Two. Three shots. Without aiming, without a hit. Now I’m over him: I grab his wrist, levering on his shoulder I break his arm and take his gun. I hit him in the kidneys, then I break his knee with a low kick. He’s on the ground without even understanding what’s happened to him.

Red. The next one.

Aim. Fire. I hit his shoulder but only laterally. I’m too used to rely on my targeting system. I tackle him, placing his body between me and his lot who are starting to shoot. I shoot again, this time to a knee and I see it explode. Another bloke falls to the ground hit by the PCs*. The last one leaves the gun and throws up his hands.

(* PC: Police Constable)

Red. I kick him in the face and he ends up on the ground.

My instinct tells me to finish him. No, I must not, it’s over. I need to calm down.

White. The artificial organ starts to produce the antidote to the stimulant drug.

White. Only now I become aware of the PC who’s yelling at me to drop the gun and raise my hands. I obey.

White. Now everything slows down, I feel the sweat drying on me. I notice a wound on my arm, I must have been hit laterally.

Blue. It’s the time of the drug that keeps me calm and relaxed when the stimulant high is over.

Blue. I identify myself with the police, then I ask about the cause of the firefight. It was just a robbery.

Blue. Sarah reaches me, I smile and wink at her as she looks worriedly at the paramedic who takes care of the wound in my arm.

After that, we take a walk. The sun begins to set.

“It’s that what you mean by ordinary life, Hauer?” she says.

“No, of course not. But … this is part of what I want to be,” I say, trying to smile.

“It means … what? What do you want to be?”

“Captain America!”

She stops abruptly. She stares at me with her mouth slightly open. I never saw Sarah speechless before. The provocation has had an effect greater than expected. I laugh out loud, it has been a long time since the last time it happened. A time so long that the muscles of my jaw seem to move with difficulty doing something so unusual.

“Seriously … I want to be what Cap is,” I resume. “I want to be a symbol, an inspiration. Not a weapon, not a killer. I don’t want to be what they’ve built me to be, I want to become what I want to be, despite the purpose for which I was built! I want to prove that you can be what you want, despite the low blows of fate.”

Sarah looks down absently. She starts walking, I hear her muttering something in a low voice: “… a man like that …” is the only thing I can get. I keep looking at her as she goes away. She spreads her arms and let them fall on her hips, then shakes her head. She walks to the parapet and she leans against it supporting her head with one hand. She remains there looking at the river.

“… teenager …” I hear her say.

“What?”

“No … no, nothing” she answers startled, as if woken up suddenly.

“Listen to me … Sarah … I asked you to come … OK, in short, I wanted to see you because I think I need your help,” I confess with some embarrassment. “I have no memories of my life as a civilian, since I woke up I did nothing but fight. I have to build a life for myself and I don’t even know where to start from!”

She smiles and takes my arm.

“You could start by taking me out to dinner! Then we’ll think about the rest.”