Tracie Peterson Read Online Free PDF Page B

instead to teach David in a gentleness of spirit rather than anger.
    When the first explosions echoed across the water, David had nearly wrecked the jeep. In what became a rather surreal arena, David found his world completely altered. Bombs exploded in vivid bursts of flame. Billowing smoke rolled off the ships in the harbor and the docks. Soon it was almost impossible to see.
    The noise built to an incredible crescendo. It was the noise David most remembered. The mass chaos had a sound like nothing he’d ever known. People screamed out in terror, aircraft roared overhead, bombs, cannons, and bullets offered a cacophony all their own. It was madness, pure and simple. There was no other word for it. Somehow America had gone to war, neglecting to let David in on the details.
    When a Zero swooped low, barreling down from the sky, guns annihilating anything in their paths, David swerved to avoid being hit and lost control of the jeep. Flipping it upside down, David had still hoped to make it to safety as he crawled out from under the vehicle, but then an explosion rocked the very foundations of the earth and David knew nothing more. At least for a time.
    Soon enough, David regained consciousness and the insanity returned. Someone had placed him on a litter, but they’d left him alongside another man—a man whose entire body lay blackened and burned, a man who no longer had even the slightest indication of life. Barely able to turn his head, David found another dead man on his left. The vision blurred before his eyes as he heard someone yell, “Forget about the dead, we can’t help them now! Just get the litter.”
    Even in his corrupted state of consciousness, David knew they were talking about him and the men who lay beside him. Preservation gave him strength to call out. The word was garbled, slurred, and tasted of blood, but David nevertheless forced it from between his lips as the man came to move him from the litter.
    “Help!”
    In real life they had come to his aid, but in his nightmares they never did. Instead, David fought with imaginary demons, and rather than be taken to the sterile hospital bed where he could be cared for, David found himself wandering the docks of Pearl.
    His imagination was far worse than anything life could have dealt him. He saw men dead or dying—bodies floating in the water, bodies lying on the ground around him. But worse still, he saw the dead come back to life to accuse him. He tried to get to the Arizona —to Kenny—but the ship was gone.
    They’ve made it out of the harbor , he would tell himself, but then he would see the truth of it. The Arizona had been sunk with most of its crew trapped within. In his nightmare he would attempt to right the wrong. As was often the case in dreams, David had a superhuman strength that allowed him to move bodies and debris in an effortless fashion, but it was never enough. With the Arizona underwater, David knew the only way to help was to jump into the water as well, and this was what he did. But it never helped. Truth be told, it only heightened the nightmare.
    The hideous macabre vision of what he found there was something David had never even shared with his doctors. The faces of his buddies and shipmates, terror-stricken in desperation, loomed before him night after night after night. David could feel them reach out to him for help. He could feel himself being pulled down deeper into the waters. He needed air! He couldn’t breathe.
    Coming awake in a heavy sweat, David always gasped for air as though it might well be his last breath. The beat of his heart pounded in his ear. He tasted the burning bile in his throat.
    Throwing off the covers, David got out of bed and went to the window. Pushing the blackout curtain aside, he realized morning had come. Still shaking, he splashed water on his face and took several deep breaths. The doctors had told him to imagine himself somewhere pleasant—someplace he had been and found enjoyable. They had