The Corps.

“Look,” Maya says, walking along the back wall of the room. “You didn’t hire the man because of his finesse. You didn’t hire him for flash. You hired him because he’s brutal, and that’s what you got.”

AWOL sits on the edge of the hotel room bed, staring glassy eyed at the floor. Pupils dilated, his thoughts are clearly far away from this room. Maya, for her part, is similarly distracted as she paces back and forth on the opposite end of the room, shouting into her cell phone.

“Don’t give me that shit,” she says, “You knew what state he was in when you cleared him to compete, and Craven knew it too. He decided to take the risk. He got in the ring. This week, when Evans gets in the ring he’ll be taking the same risk. I can’t promise anything more than that.”

They’re talking about AWOL. He’s sitting in the room, and it is evident that he could not care any less. His eyes slowly blink, and his lips start to move, silently muttering to himself.

“So what? The crowd loved watching what he did to Craven. They love the face washes, the beat downs. This isn’t a boxing crowd, it’s an IWC crowd. They want blood, and he’s going to give it to him. So frankly, no, I’m not going to promise it won’t happen again this week. Hell, you should be BEGGING for it to happen again. What the hell does Pat Evans contribute to this company anyways? If AWOL puts him on the shelf, it’ll free up space for you to go get some actual talent.”

His lips continue to move, and from the shape of the words it becomes obvious that he’s counting. One, two, three, four…

“You’ll get a promo when he feels like doing a promo.”

One, two, three, four…

“Who the fuck am I? I’m his new agent. If you want to talk business with AWOL, you’re going to be talking to me from now on.”

One, two, three, four…

“You’re god damned right I’m a bitch. And I’m the bitch that you’re going to be dealing with from here on out, so you’d better get used to it.”

One…

“Look, you just get Evans into the ring tomorrow, and I’ll make sure AWOL’s there.”

Two…

“Yeah, that’s all. Lovely to talk to you as well.”

Three…

With a sigh, Maya, flips off the phone and tosses it onto the bed, her angry scowl instantly evaporating, replaced with a smile.

Four…

She drapes her delicate hands over his shoulders, giving them a rub as she slides up onto the bed behind him. “You and me, big guy, we’re gonna do big things together. BIG things.”

He turns, looking into her green eyes, a look of confusion and mild interest finally showing on his features.

“Something on your mind?” she asks, flashing him an even wider smile.

He pauses for a moment, seeming to mull things over, before turning to resume staring blankly at the wall. His only verbal response is to whisper a single phrase.

“I love the Marine Corps.”

***

There were years, even after I left the service, when I could still hear that chant in my sleep. One, two, three, four, I, love, the Marine, Corps. One, two, three, four, I, Love, The Marine, Corps. It was the rhythm you lived your life to while you were in basic. You adopted it almost the minute you showed up. It was the only thing that could keep you sane, really. They taught it to you as the pace for push-ups, but it became so much more than that. When you brushed your teeth, it was to that beat. When you walked, that was the cadence.

Once, I caught myself thrusting to the same rhythm while having sex.

What the hell was I talking about? Oh, right, the Corps. As a civilian, there’s really no way to understand what Hell Week is really all about. I can tell you the horror stories, of course. I can tell you about how they didn’t let us sleep for a week. I can tell you how they made me clean the grout of the bathroom every night with a toothbrush, squatting over the cold tile floor, knowing that if I so much as raised up an inch or let my butt touch the ground, that it would be the last goddamned thing I ever fucking did, at least according to my drill sergeant. I could tell you how, after that week, I spent another week or so in the infirmary with stress fractures in both feet, and how, when it’s going to rain, they still ache today.

I could tell you those things, but if you weren’t there to experience them, you can’t understand.

A lot of people believe the point is to make you hard, to toughen you up inside. They think that the Corps finds the baddest, meanest pricks to be drill sergeants, and that they do it because somehow, someway, it’ll make you a better soldier. They’re half right. The truth is, the point is to keep you alive. When you’re in the shit, when everything is falling apart, when the world is turning upside down, the worst enemy you can have is your own mind. Fear, panic, these are the things that make good marines into dead marines. The point of hell week is to break you down, take everything that you were before you got there, strip out all the parts that aren’t of any use to you in a combat zone, and replace them with icewater and iron.

There’s no magic to why marines are the toughest bastards on the planet. It’s simple conditioning. By the time your boot instructors are done with you, when it all goes FUBAR you don’t panic anymore because you can’t. You physically can not do it. That part of your brain? It fell out somewhere around the fiftieth mile you were running at 4 AM when you hadn’t slept in five days. Instead of fear, instead of confusion, what comes back to you is your training. You keep your ass down when you’re crawling because your drill sergeant stomped the shit out of it every time you let it rise up too high. You follow orders without questioning because you spent so much time being dressed down in front of your whole training platoon for insubordination. You fire without thinking. You act without considering. You block out the rattle of gunfire and the explosions and the screams of the dead and the soon to be, and all you can hear is…

…one, two, three, four…

I don’t mention it because I like the sound of my own voice, or because I enjoy reminiscing about the good old days or even to impress the fans with my old war stories. I bring it up because, in my sleep Pat Evans, that is the only thing that I hear now. In my idle moments, it rings in my ears. Every time I try to move, it’s back. Sometimes I can hear the echoing voices of my platoon, sometimes I can only hear mine. Sometimes I just feel my pulse pounding in my temples to the beat, but it’s always there, it’s always with me, and it has been here ever since Two for One Special.

I didn’t understand why, at first, but it should have been obvious. This isn’t really a war, persay, but the IWC has many qualities to remind you of it. The chaos, the uncertainty, the inability to tell who’s really on your side. We aren’t exactly wearing uniforms here, and alliances change so rapidly you’d think this was an episode of Survivor. People you think are friends one week are throwing you in trunks the next. Just as soon as you think you have a handle on it, the rules change completely. And the only thing you can ultimately be sure of is that, in the end, whatever happens will not be fair. There is no justice on the battlefield, no order. All that is consistent is anarchy, and the one who can capitalize on it first wins.

I tried to deny it, Pat. Don’t you see? That was the mistake! I tried to pretend that it wasn’t the case. I tried to pretend that, somehow, someway, I could force this place to change, to bend itself to some sort of order. I should have know better. It seems that no matter how long I spend in this business, I’ll never learn this one inescapable truth: violence is the rule of the day in today’s IWC. Violence is the one, true, equalizer.

I tried to deny it, I tried to fight, but it broke me Pat. It broke me down, and I had nothing left. I was within a hair’s breath of fighting for the World Title, two World Titles, and for no god damned reason whatsoever Josh Hudson stopped me. He didn’t care about Savior, or Zero, or any fucking thing. He got it, Evans. He figured it out. He saw the truth the way I’m beginning to see it now. But it was a painful realization, and it nearly finished me. Were I not a product of my experiences, I may not be here now. But, ultimately, there was one thing I could fall back on. One thing was waiting for me when it all went into the pisser, when all the bullshit I was filling my head with finally caught up to me, and it was the one thing that I will always be able to rely on, whether I like it or not. The training was there. The drills were there. And, to be honest, they’re the only thing keeping me on my feet.

…

But you see, the thing is, that’s more than enough to take care of you, Pat.