One boy had died, but one somehow lived. He’d walked to a nearby compound despite heavy internal bleeding and dehydration. We found him, scared and exhausted, and took him back to Terra Nova in the back of the Afghan Police’s Ford Ranger. 

His dead friend was at Durie, and as the squad’s biometrics expert, I was tasked with processing him. The young man barely looked real: his face was burned beyond recognition, brains hanging out behind his left ear. His left arm was amputated, clothes torn and tattered, and his legs faced opposite directions from being blown out at the knees. 

I couldn’t get a picture of his face because it was too damaged, so I went for his irises next. When I pried open his eyelids, nothing but two black voids stared back at me, deep pools of darkness enveloped his irises as the pupils dilated post-mortem. I cleaned his fingers off with spit and water to get his prints, the severed hand yielding better results. 

We got back at noon. I smoked cigarettes for two hours.

I’ve seen his face and eyes nearly every day since. I saw it in my grandfather’s face after he passed. My dad’s, too.