After I’d given Krakauer enough morphine to knock out a horse, he...
He got up instead.
It was terrifying, like I’d seen a zombie stand up and walk, or something..
Krakauer pulled himself up and initially only stood there leaning on his rifle, but before long, he started pointing it around all over the place, and seemingly, he was looking for a target to shoot..
“Krack,” I said looking straight at him.
He turned to me with the iron pipe and his temporary bandage, which he’d wrapped around it and was now dripping blood down his neck.
This can’t be real – I told myself.
I must be dreaming..
“Stay down! We’ve got to wait for everybody else,” I said, as he simply ignored me.
“You’re going to crash into the branches or something with this iron bar sticking out like that.”
After thinking about it for a moment, he came back and sat down on his knees.
He was coherent.
Despite all the morphine and the pain, he was rational.
He hadn't lost it yet.
“If you can't pull it out, saw it off,” he said.
Jesus, he really was on the ball.
He may have been thinking more clearly than I was actually.
I was still somewhat paralysed on account of the horror of it all.
It wasn't professional, I know.
It was particularly unprofessional behaviour for someone in the Special Forces.
But I’ve known him far too long to not feel anything.
“We’re going to carry you on a hammock, the same way we would on a stretcher.”
“Pull-it-out,” he said with a furry tongue.
“I’ll walk,” he added, banging his head like a rocker head as I jumped to close in on to him, trying to keep him still.
I looked at my friend with that iron bar coming out of his head and I knew, deep inside, that he was a dead man walking. Getting to the LZ and surviving the flight back was, I think, fucking impossible.
He had no fucking idea.
He was the one who didn't know.