In at the Death

by Harry Turtledove

  U.S. custom was to assemble the people from the nearest town—here, it was Loganville, Georgia—to witness hostage executions and, with luck, to learn from them. Nobody in the CSA seemed to have learned much from them yet. O’Doull listened to one flat, sharp volley of rifle fire after another in the middle distance: twenty-five in all. Before they got to the last one, he did dip into the brandy. It didn’t do a damn bit of good.

  He kept wondering if Billie Jean’s father or brothers or maybe even husband (had she worn a wedding ring?—he didn’t remember, and Vince wouldn’t have cared) would show up at the aid station. Then he wondered if those people were part of the crowd that had got the girl and the medic. Would they have lulled them into a false sense of security before springing the trap? He never found out.

  Eddie stayed in the aid tent as his first assistant for three days. Then the replacement depot coughed up a new senior medic, a sergeant named, of all things, Goodson Lord. He was tall and blond and handsome—he really might have been God’s gift to women, unlike poor Donofrio, who only thought he was.

  O’Doull greeted him with a fishy stare. “How hard do you chase skirt?” he demanded.

  “Not very much, sir,” Lord answered. Something in his voice made O’Doull give him a different kind of fishy look: did he chase men instead? Well, if he did, he’d damn well know he had to be careful about that. Queers didn’t have an easy time of it anywhere.

  “Make sure you don’t, not around here,” was all O’Doull thought he could say. “The guy you’re replacing did, and they murdered him for it.” Sergeant Lord nodded without another word of his own.

  When a U.S. soldier came in with a bullet in the hip, Lord proved plenty capable. He knew much more than Eddie, and probably more than poor Vince had. The aid station would run just fine. That was O’Doull’s biggest concern. Everything else took second place, and a distant second to boot.

  Armstrong Grimes and his platoon leader crouched—sprawled, really—in a shell hole northeast of Covington, Georgia. Armstrong was wet and cold. A hard, nasty rain had started in the middle of the night and showed no signs of letting up. The Confederates had a machine gun in a barn half a mile ahead. Every so often, it would fire a burst and make the U.S. soldiers keep their heads down.

  “Wish we had a couple of barrels in the neighborhood,” Armstrong said. “They’d quiet that fucker down in a hurry. Even a mortar team would do the trick.”

  “Well, it’s not that you’re wrong, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Bassler replied. “But what we’ve got is—us. We’re going to have to take that gun out, too. We leave it there, it stalls a battalion’s worth of men.”

  “Yes, sir,” Armstrong said resignedly. It wasn’t that Bassler was wrong, either. But approaching a machine gun wasn’t one of the more enjoyable jobs infantry got.

  “For once, the rain helps,” Bassler said. “Bastards in there won’t be able to see us coming so well.”

  “Yes, sir,” Armstrong said again. He knew what that meant. They’d be able to get closer to the gun before it knocked them down.

  “You take your squad around toward the back of the barn,” Bassler said. “I’ll lead another group toward the front. We ought to be able to work our way in pretty close, and then we’ll play it by ear.”

  “Yes, sir,” Armstrong said one more time. He didn’t have anything else to say, not here. Bassler wasn’t just coming along. He’d given himself the more dangerous half of the mission. You wanted to follow an officer who did things like that.

  “All right, then. I’ll give you ten minutes to gather your men. We’ll move out at”—Bassler checked his watch—“at 0850, and I’ll see you by the barn.”

  “0850. Yes, sir. See you there.” Armstrong scrambled out of the hole and wiggled off toward the men he led. The machine gun opened up on him, but halfheartedly, as if the crew wasn’t sure it was really shooting at anything. He dove into another hole, then came out and kept going.

  “Password!” That was a U.S. accent.

  “Remembrance,” Armstrong said, and then, “It’s me, Squidface.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is, Sarge,” the PFC answered. “Come on. What’s up? We goin’ after that fuckin’ gun?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” Armstrong said. “Our guys go to the right, the lieutenant goes to the left, and when we get close whoever sees the chance knocks it out. Will you take point?”

  Squidface was little and skinny and nervous—he made a good point man, and a good point man made everybody else likely to live longer. But even the best point man was more likely to get shot than his buddies. He was there to sniff out trouble, sometimes by running into it.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it.” Squidface didn’t sound enthusiastic, but he didn’t say no. “Who you gonna put in behind me?”

  “I’ll go myself,” Armstrong said. “Zeb the Hat after me, then the rest of the guys. Or do you have some other setup you like better?”

  “No, that oughta work,” Squidface said. “If anything works, I mean. If the guys at the gun decide to go after us—”

  “Yeah, we’re screwed in that case,” Armstrong agreed. “You got plenty of grenades? Need ’em for a job like this.”

  “I got ’em,” Squidface said. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Good. We move at 0850.”

  Armstrong gathered up the rest of his squad. Nobody was thrilled about going after the machine gun, but nobody hung back, either. At 0850 on the dot, they trotted toward the barn. The rain had got heavier. Armstrong liked that. Not only would it veil them from the gunners, the drum and drip would mask the noise they made splashing through puddles.

  Somewhere off to the left, Lieutenant Bassler’s men were moving, too. Maybe it’ll be easy, Armstrong thought hopefully. Maybe the guys at the gun won’t know we’re around till we get right on top of them. Maybe—

  The gun started hammering. Despite the rain, Armstrong had no trouble seeing the muzzle flashes. They all seemed to be aimed right at him. He yipped and hit the dirt—hit the mud, rather.

  Nobody behind him screamed, so he dared hope the burst missed the men he led, too. He peered ahead. He didn’t see Squidface on his feet, but nobody with his head on straight would have stayed upright when the machine gun cut loose.

  He hoped the platoon commander and his guys were taking advantage of all this. They could be getting close…

  Then the hateful gun started up again. This time, it was aimed away from Armstrong and his squad. “Up!” he shouted. “Get cracking!” He splashed forward. And there was Squidface, up and running, too. Armstrong breathed a silent sigh of relief. He’d feared he would lope past the point man’s corpse.

  They’d got within a couple of hundred yards when the machine gun cut off once more. “Down!” Squidface yelled, and suited action to word.

  Armstrong threw himself flat, too. Three seconds later, a bullet snarled through the place where he’d been standing. That made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Somebody behind him yowled like a cat with its tail in a rocking chair—Whitey, he thought. His mouth shaped the word Fuck.

  Three or four guys from Lieutenant Bassler’s group opened up on the machine-gun crew—they could see the Confederates better than Armstrong and his squad could. Then another machine gun farther back opened up on them.

  This time, Armstrong said, “Fuck,” out loud. He might have known—and Bassler might have known, too—that the Confederates would have one gun covering another. Once the men in green-gray knocked out this one, they would have to stalk the next. And if they didn’t take more casualties doing it, God would have doled out a miracle, and He was as niggardly with them as a quartermaster sergeant was with new boots.

  As soon as the gun in the barn swung back to Lieutenant Bassler’s men, Armstrong and his squad rushed it. They hadn’t given themselves away by firing, so the gun farther back didn’t know they were around—and the men they were attacking didn’t realize how much trouble they were in till too late.

  Squidfa
ce threw the first grenade. Armstrong’s first flew at the same time as the PFC’s second. The Confederate machine gunners howled. The gun got off a short burst. This time, two bullets came closer to Armstrong than they had any business doing. Another grenade knocked the machine gun sideways. The soldiers in butternut who could still fight grabbed for their personal weapons. None of them fired a shot. Armstrong’s men made sure of that.

  “Turn the gun around,” Armstrong said. “We’ll let the assholes at the next position farther back know their turn’s coming up.”

  None of his men was a regular machine gunner. But if you could use a rifle, you could use a machine gun after a fashion. They’d all practiced with them in basic training. And the C.S. weapon was about as simple to use as a machine gun could be. Squidface aimed the gun while Zeb the Hat gathered fresh belts of ammunition.

  “You know,” Squidface said as he squeezed off a burst, “this goddamn thing has a bipod, too. We could take it off the tripod mount and bring it along with us.”

  “Are you volunteering?” Armstrong asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it,” Squidface said. “Why the hell not? We sure get a lot of extra firepower, and we can probably liberate enough ammo to keep it fed.”

  “It’s yours, then.” Armstrong was all for extra firepower. If Squidface wanted to carry the machine gun instead of a lighter rifle, that was fine with him.

  The Confederates back closer to Covington realized what machine-gun fire coming their way was bound to mean. They returned it. Armstrong flattened out like a nightcrawler under a barrel. The Confederates shot a little high, so nobody got hit.

  “Way to go!” Lieutenant Bassler’s voice came out of the rain. “Shall we stalk these next assholes, too?”

  A gung-ho lieutenant was good. A lieutenant who got too gung-ho wasn’t, because he’d get people killed. “Sir, I have one man wounded, maybe two,” Armstrong answered. “Let’s round up a mortar team and see if we can drop shit on the bastards instead.”

  When Bassler didn’t say yes right away, Armstrong got a sinking feeling. The platoon commander was going to tell him no. That machine-gun crew up ahead would be waiting for the U.S. soldiers to come at them—not a chance in hell for surprise. Armstrong didn’t want an oak-leaf cluster for his Purple Heart.

  But before Lieutenant Bassler could issue what might literally have been a fatal order, a couple of Confederates fired short bursts from their automatic rifles in the direction of the gun Armstrong’s squad had just captured. Nobody got hurt, but the U.S. soldiers hit the dirt again. Armstrong jammed an index finger up against the bottom of his nose to kill a sneeze. Wouldn’t get a Purple Heart for pneumonia, he thought, but I’d sure as hell end up in the hospital with it.

  The extra gunfire convinced Bassler he’d had a bad idea. “They’ve got a regular line up there,” he said. “That gun’s not just an outpost, the way this one was. No point slamming our faces into it—a mortar team’s probably a better plan. Good thinking, Sergeant.”

  “Uh—thank you, sir,” Armstrong answered. When was the last time an officer told him something like that? Had an officer ever told him anything like that? Damned if he could remember.

  Squidface winked at him. “Teacher’s pet.”

  “Yeah, well, up yours, Charlie,” Armstrong replied. “You want to charge a machine-gun nest when Featherston’s fuckers are waiting for you, go ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”

  “No, thanks,” Squidface said. “Already got my asshole puckered once today. That’s plenty. Hell, that’s once too many.”

  “Twice too many,” Zeb the Hat said. “Why ain’t we twenty miles back of the line, eatin’ offa tablecloths an’ screwin’ nurses?”

  “’Cause we’re lucky,” Armstrong said, which drew a chorus of derisive howls. “And ’cause no nurse ever born’d be desperate enough to screw you, Zeb.”

  “Huh! Shows what you know, Sarge.” Zeb the Hat launched into a story that was highly obscene and even more highly unlikely. It was entertaining, though, almost entertaining enough to make Armstrong forget he lay sprawled in cold mud with an enemy machine gun not nearly far enough away.

  A few minutes later, mortar bombs started bursting somewhere near that C.S. gun. Through the driving rain, Armstrong couldn’t tell how close they were coming. “Hey, you guys at the gun, fire off a burst,” Lieutenant Bassler said. “Let’s see if they answer.”

  “I’ll do it if you want, sir,” Squidface said, “but if I was a Confederate I’d sandbag and see if I could lure us in.”

  “Fuck me,” Bassler said. “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe we’d better sit tight for a while, wait till reinforcements come up.”

  Armstrong liked that order just fine. He drew back into the barn and lit a cigarette. It wasn’t so bad in here. It was dry—though the roof dripped—and nobody was shooting at him right this minute. What more could you want? A horny nurse, he thought, and then, Yeah, wish for the moon while you’re at it.

  Jorge Rodriguez had a stripe on his sleeve. Making PFC meant he got another six dollars each and every month. It meant he got to tell buck privates what to do. And it meant the Confederate Army didn’t care that he was a greaser from Sonora. He’d convinced the people above him that he made a pretty decent soldier.

  Sergeant Blackledge treated him no different on account of his promotion. Blackledge treated everybody under him like dirt all the time. And not just people under him—the sergeant had threatened to shoot General Patton if he didn’t quit slapping a soldier with combat fatigue. As far as Jorge was concerned, that took more guts than bravery against the damnyankees.

  “Hey, Sarge!” Gabriel Medwick called as Jorge sewed on his stripe. “How come I don’t get promoted, too?” He sounded more than half joking—he and Jorge were buddies. He was tall and blond and handsome: the Freedom Party ideal. Jorge was none of the above. They got on well anyhow.

  “Next time we need a guy, I reckon you will,” Blackledge answered. “In the meantime, don’t get your balls in an uproar. You can’t buy more’n a couple of extra fucks on a PFC’s pay, so if you get too horny to stand it in the meantime, just pull it out of your pants and beat it.”

  That made Jorge snicker, but it shut Gabe up like a gag—and turned him sunset-red, too. He was as innocent as if he’d been born into the previous century; Jorge wondered if he’d heard about the facts of life before the Army grabbed him. Girls would have fallen all over him, too. Hardly any of the girls in Georgia wanted to look at Jorge, much less do anything else. He wasn’t a nigger, but he wasn’t exactly white, either.

  Georgia girls might not think he was good enough to lay them, but they thought he was plenty good enough to keep the damnyankees away. He crouched in a muddy foxhole on Floyd Street, in front of what had been the Usher House. He gathered it had been a local landmark before the war came this way. But U.S. artillery and air strikes had accomplished its fall. Half a dozen columns had stretched across its front. Now they—and the house timbers—were knocked every which way, like God’s game of pick-up-sticks.

  Orders were to defend Covington to the last man. Sergeant Blackledge had some lewd remarks about orders like that. Jorge understood why, too. The veteran noncom had no problems about killing Yankees. He’d done a lot of it. He was much less happy about the prospect of getting killed himself. Who wasn’t?

  But Jorge could also see why the powers that be issued those orders. U.S. forces were curling down from the northeast. Every town they took cut off one more route into and out of Atlanta. Every advance they made brought more roads and railroad lines into artillery range. If they kept coming, Atlanta would fall—or else they would just strangle it and let it wither on the vine. The Confederacy had to stop them somewhere. Why not Covington?

  Rising screams in the air made Jorge duck down low and fold himself up as small as he could. He didn’t need the shouts of “Incoming!” to know artillery was on the way.

  Most of it came down in back of the positions his squad was holding. In a way, th
at was a relief. It meant there was less risk of a round’s butchering him right this minute. But it left him worried about what was coming next. Were the damnyankees trying to cut the town off from reinforcements? If they were, did that mean they’d try to smash through soon?

  “Barrels!” somebody shouted. Jorge could have done without such a prompt answer to his question.

  If the U.S. soldiers thought they could waltz into Covington, they had to change their minds in a hurry. A rocket took out the lead U.S. barrel, and an antibarrel cannon set two more on fire. Confederate artillery pounded the poor damned infantrymen loping along with the barrels. The rain kept Jorge from seeing them, but he knew they’d be there. U.S. attacks worked about the same as the ones his side used.

  Enemy fire eased. “Taught ’em a lesson that time,” Gabe Medwick said.

  “Sí.” Jorge nodded. “Now what kind of lesson they gonna try and teach us?” He had a Sonoran accent, but his English was good.

  “They’ve gotta know they can’t drive us outa here as easy as they want to,” his pal said.

  “Sí,” Jorge repeated, and he nodded again. “But they don’t always gotta drive us out to make us move.”

  “Huh?” Medwick might be blond and brave and handsome, but there were good and cogent reasons why nobody had ever accused him of being bright. That was probably a big part of why Jorge had a stripe and he didn’t.

  Jorge didn’t try to explain things to Gabe. Life was too short. If he was lucky, he was wrong, in which case the explanation would only be a waste of time anyhow. He just said, “Well, we find out,” and let it go at that.

  More U.S. artillery came down on Covington. A lot of it landed up toward the front line. Yes, the Yankees were annoyed that the defenders didn’t lie down and quit. Before long, the shelling eased up again and a U.S. officer approached under a flag of truce. “What the hell you want?” Sergeant Blackledge yelled.

  “You fought well,” the lieutenant answered. “Your honor is satisfied. Throw down your weapons and surrender and you’ll be treated well. If you keep fighting, though, you don’t have a chance. We can’t answer for what will happen to you then.”