by Chris Bostic
Connie wasn’t necessarily by the book, but he was a closed book when it came to his personal life. Even if Joe had been feeling chatty enough to strike up a conversation with one of his other squad mates, he wouldn’t have dared after that episode with Pete. Connie would have probably shot him for that. So Joe put one exhausted foot in front of the other and plodded along.
After a while, Joe quit bothering to look at the hillsides. He kept his head down and focused on the rocks, admiring how something so blackened by war could still remain strong under pressure.
Joe figured Danny would stumble across the savages first like a good point man. Besides, the overachiever was probably paying the proper attention to his task. If they were walking into an ambush, then so be it. Dying sounded better to Joe by the minute.
Inevitably, Joe hit his limit. His boots dragged through the rocks. A stubbed toe pitched him forward, and it took all his strength to remain upright. With a giant sigh, he threw his head back and pleaded to the empty sky.
“Where’s air support?” Joe cried. “Can’t they even get a lousy drone to us?”
Pete spun around. “It could be the virus thing. Besides, they don’t know we’re here, remember?”
“But not even a flyover? I mean, seriously, where are the ships?”
Connie cut in on the conversation. “Keep down the chatter.”
Joe ignored him. “I haven’t even heard any shots in a while.”
“That’s ‘cause it’s midday,” Connie said. “The cold-blooded savages stay out of the heat.”
“Must be nice,” Pete groused.
“Yeah.” Joe nodded and looked back to the sky. The sun had dropped a little lower in the west. It wouldn’t be long before it slipped beneath the canyon wall and bathed the squad in shadows. Then things might go from bad to worse. Until then, Joe assumed, he had to hike until he dropped. It wasn’t going to be long for him.
“Connie?” Danny said. “How about a quick break?”
Joe almost laughed into his mouthpiece and hid the noise as if he was clearing his dry throat. No way would Connie go for stopping.
“Yeah, we can do that,” Connie replied.
Pete cursed. Joe whirled around to look at his buddy. Steam rose from Pete’s helmet like a cartoon character as he yanked it off.
“This looks like as good a place as any,” Connie said. “Everybody stay alert.” Then, in complete contradiction to his own order, he stood off to the side of the group and removed his helmet. Setting his weapon against a boulder, he strode over to the stream and dipped a bowlful of cool water.
Pete’s fists clenched, and Joe went to him, saying, “Easy, bud.”
“Stupid Danny. That’s crap, man.”
“I know. But Connie’s pet always gets what he wants.” Joe patted his friend on the shoulder before stepping toward the water. “At least you finally get that water. I’m diving in.”
“No way.” Pete hurried after his friend.
“Yeah, not really. Could you imagine how bad this armor would chafe?”
Leisa had already dumped a helmet over her head and turned back to watch the two guys. Having heard Joe, she said, “No worse than my boots.”
“Your feet killing you too?”
“Yeah. I’ll never get used to these boots.” She stepped closer to the stream. “I’m gonna dunk my feet.”
Joe reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t get your boots wet. That’ll make it worse.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes slowing moving from his face to his hand still resting on her shoulder. Joe let the touch linger a moment longer before squeezing her shoulder. Leisa’s pained smile seemed more like a smirk, and he self-consciously pulled his arm back.
“You have any extra socks?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Then wash your feet and put on clean socks. Two pairs, if you have ‘em.”
“Yeah, who knew we were walking all the way back to base today,” Pete said, inserting himself into the conversation. “And apparently not stopping until it was okay with Danny boy.”
“You noticed that too, huh?” Leisa said.
“Hard to miss Sarge’s pet.” Pete pulled off his boots. The odor was foul. Not as bad as the savages’ fishy stench, but enough to cause Joe to step back.
Laura came over to join in the conversation, and Joe quickly warned her away. “It’s not pretty over here. You might want to steer clear of the foot fungus.”
She saw Leisa taking off her boots rather than Pete’s dirty-socked feet. “You saying my girl’s feet stink?”
Joe froze, only then seeing Leisa with one boot off. He hesitated and couldn’t reply.
“Well you’d be right,” Laura added. “They’re the worst. Training with her was awful.”
“Laura!” Leisa exclaimed. “That’s not cool.”
“So that’s why you carry the smelly soap,” Pete joked.
“Gotta cover up that stench,” Laura said. “Fungus masks best with fruity bouquet, but mint’s better than nothing.”
Leisa harrumphed. “Seriously, can we get off my feet?”
“Go for it. Take a load off.” Pete shot a look toward Connie, who was dumping yet another improvised bucket of water over his head. “We’d better keep it down before Sarge flips out again.”
“Yeah, what was that all about?” Leisa asked, obviously happy to change the subject even if the new one was equally as unpleasant.
“I thought he was gonna shoot you,” Laura said. “You know, just like the savages. You don’t do what they tell you, and they’ll shoot you on the spot.”
“That’s what they say,” Pete said. “I don’t know what got into the guy.”
“It’s crazy alright,” Joe said. “I’ve seen some nasty sergeants…a bunch of real bad people in these uniforms,” he tugged at his green shirt, “especially the officers. But I never thought it would go that far.”
“That’s why the savages charge like fools,” Pete insisted. “Better to let us mow ‘em down than their own officers.”
“I guess it’s one way to enforce discipline,” Laura said, her voice tentative. “It’s sick.”
Leisa glanced downstream at their sergeant, and whispered, “So is Connie.”
A hum rose through the cavern, and Joe followed her glance to find their leader was the source. With his armor unfastened, Connie stood knee deep in the stream splashing his barrel chest and humming an old patriotic song. He’d really lost it.
All four heads turned his direction. Even Danny pulled his attention from the surrounding hills to watch their fearless leader bathe in the cool stream.
“Heat stroke?” Pete suggested.
“Maybe that hit to the head shorted out some other wires?” Joe quipped, tapping his own head with his index finger.
Leisa laughed, drawing Connie’s glare their direction.
“What are you looking at?” he growled. “Can’t a guy bathe in peace?”
“You want some soap?” Pete said, nodding his head toward the girls.
“Hell, no. The dang savages will smell me from a mile away. They’ve got noses like bloodhounds.”
Joe flashed back to the dead soldier. The eyes were the prominent feature. Each as big as a chicken’s egg. With a yellowing around the pupil, they took over the entire face with one grisly exception. The sharpened teeth, filed to a point. He was surprised there hadn’t been two or three rows of teeth like some kind of shark. But Joe could recall nothing special about their noses. They seemed flat, definitely not long or pointy, but he couldn’t put a finger on anything unusual. Everything else was unusual enough without that feature being deformed too.
Strange creatures, those savages, he thought. He assumed they spoke, but he’d heard nothing but the chirping and whistling. Even in the thick of battle around Kayla’s foxhole, they’d offered no more than a grunt or moan. But he supposed he’d done the same. Better groans than gnashing teeth and growls like the savages they were.
“It’s time to eat,” Connie declared. He strode out of the water and made a beeline for his coilgun. Sitting on a boulder in the shade of a leafy giant, he rested the weapon across his lap. “Break out the grub, ladies.”
Laura groaned but complied. That was how she usually went about things. Without Kayla around, she was unlikely to complain more emphatically.
She dug around in her pack and pulled out several plastic packets of a rice-like substance. Chunks of protein, possibly soy, served as a less than tasty substitute for meat, and several dehydrated orange and green bits provided the vegetable portion of the feast.
“Take these to your master,” Laura said with a grin, handing the packets to Leisa.
Leisa grimaced at the words but complied. Connie ripped into his right away and poured water from a spare bottle in his backpack into the packet. Joe watched as he swished it around, but didn’t bother heating it up. There was no time for cooking fires, and they couldn’t afford the smoke.
The squad gathered together. Despite his earlier threats, Connie allowed everyone to eat. He passed the water bottle to Pete first, who splashed some in his packet before sending it around to Danny, then Joe and the girls.
Granted, the water was plenty warm, but in no way was that enough to soften the rice. At least not without waiting for several minutes—and Connie was in no mood for delaying.
He spoke with his mouth half full of mush. “We’re gonna push it hard the next couple hours…then find us a spot to dig in.”
Joe crunched on the hard rice. It wouldn’t mash underneath his teeth, and he ended up swallowing it down like a mouthful of gravel.
“So what’s next, Sarge?” Danny asked.
“We might run across some friendlies somewhere,” Connie said. His eyes roamed the hillside. “When Fifth came apart, they probably scattered like hens.”
No one replied. Joe continued forcing down the rice concoction, but considered giving up. His dry throat ached, but the need for food won out over the pain.
“You all are practically lucky to be with us,” Connie continued, settling his gaze onto each member of the squad. “We’ve almost got discipline.” He spat out a piece of rice. “We don’t break. We hold our position and follow orders to the last…just about.”
“Tell us what to do.” Danny rose to his feet and shouldered his weapon. As he stood there like a super trooper, Joe dropped his head to stare at his aching feet. With no pack and thus no change of clothes, he hadn’t bothered to wash his feet. At least the others had swapped out clean socks.
“The savages came at us with half a division,” Connie said, a far off look in his eye. Joe swore the sergeant was back on the mountain reliving every detail, and possibly overemphasizing the glory. “We held off three charges, boys. We must’ve littered the field with a couple thousand carcasses. Not enough, but…”
How Connie could glorify that battle, Joe had no idea. The rice swelled in his belly and sat like concrete. By morning he could’ve defecated a headstone and left it behind as a marker for Kayla’s final resting place.
“You okay?” Leisa asked Joe softly.
Joe looked up at her with tired eyes. Her own green ones had lightened to the color of jade. A weary smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m fine.” He exhaled and tried to force his legs to move. They were locked up tight, more from the hike than his tumble down the hill. His back ached, even without having to carry a pack, but he wished he had one to carry. The savages were probably rooting through his stuff, maybe putting his clean socks on their knobby feet.
What a ragtag bunch, he thought. Their one-piece mustard-colored uniforms were more dirt brown than yellow from heel to spindly neck. And these were the savages who pushed his squad of semi-professional citizen soldiers across the mountain range like they were the weaker ones.
Joe supposed the first officer he’d ever met had been correct when he’d said the Republic’s kids were soft. Technology had made them weak. Pushbutton war was a great concept, and indeed had let them steamroll many a weaker nation. But the Regulators weren’t made for this kind of war. The kind that required an iron will and a reservoir of confidence.
Legions of troops would be helpful too, but the Republic was too decimated from years of empire-building to offer more than teens like him to the fight.
“What’re you thinking?” Leisa asked. She had pulled on her boots and pack, and stood with a hand extended to help him up.
“That we don’t belong here.”
“Wishful thinking, I’d say.”
“That’s all we’ve got anymore.”
She nodded and pulled Joe up. He teetered on his two feet and stood for a second to regain his balance. Pain shot through his extremities like lightning, but faded as quickly as a summer storm. Wouldn’t that be welcome, he thought. Anything to cool him down. The river water over the head had left him in a sticky, muggy undershirt with thirty pounds of the finest, warmest liquid armor over that.
It would be tantamount to suicide to take it off, but he strongly considered dumping his gear. He wouldn’t have been the first. On their long march north, back when the war was supposedly a rout of epic proportions, he’d seen plenty of packs and other gear discarded along the sides of the trails.
Thankfully, Connie wasn’t about to allow his guys to ditch their stuff.
“Don’t throw out today what you’ll need tomorrow,” he had said. “Suck it up, and you’ll thank me later.”
Without a pack of his own, Joe wasn’t ready to go that far. But he gave a begrudging nod to the sergeant. The guy might be losing his mind, but there was enough left that Joe wasn’t going to ignore all of his advice. At least not yet.
CHAPTER 12
“Does this river ever end?” Pete said, eliciting a chuckle from Connie.
“We’re going downstream, soldier. It’s only going to get bigger.”
“It seems the same to me,” Pete replied.
Joe hadn’t really noticed the difference either. The water remained about ten big paces across, and with the same gurgling intensity. The tree cover remained thin until they finally reached a point where it quit altogether.
A field of boulders lined the narrow base of the cavern. Even the hillsides were barren of the scraggly trees. Rather than scorched, the more normal gray and brown rocks closed in from all sides.
Connie had gone back up to the front with Danny at the edge of the woods. He held up a hand to stop their advance.
“Sit tight,” Connie commanded through the helmets. “This might be as far as we get today.”
Joe stole a look at the sky. The river had turned more westerly than southerly, lining them up with a direct shot at the sinking sun. Joe squinted and said, “You know where we’re at?”
“Of course,” Danny replied, but Joe noticed he handed Connie a folded paper map from the pocket of his shirt. That confirmed for Joe that communications were definitely severed along with any help from the positioning satellites.
Joe crept closer, but couldn’t get a look over Connie’s shoulder. The two super troopers spread out the map between them and rustled the paper without volunteering any information to the others.
Pete grew anxious. “So…”
“Hang on,” Connie replied gruffly and pointed downstream. “We need to get through there tonight.”
Joe followed the direction his sergeant had pointed to another patch of brushy vegetation in the distance—maybe a couple hundred yards away. The stream seemed to take a big curve to the south, yet remained in a deep valley of steeply-sloped hillsides.
“Shouldn’t we wait until tomorrow?” Pete asked. “That’s a lot of open ground.”
“Nonsense.” Connie remained standing at the edge of the woods, framed in an orange glow. As the others waited impatiently, he stared at the retreating sun. “There’s time to get in another mile or two before dark.”
“How many miles are we going?” Pete asked.
Joe couldn’t estimate the
distance anymore. Any guess was likely to be way off, though he thought they could’ve covered at least fifteen miles or more had they been on suitable terrain.
“Shouldn’t we be back to our lines by now?” Pete added when no one answered him.
Joe wasn’t so certain about that. He wasn’t even sure if they’d ever see their comrades again. Nor did he necessarily care.
Connie cleared his throat and spat on the ground. He turned back to the others and lowered his visor. “No telling. The rabbits could’ve run clear back to Nochni.” Connie sighed. “And that’ll make it harder to blend in with them,” he added cryptically.
“It’s just us now,” Danny said, cementing himself into his new role as number two. “That’s all you gotta worry about.”
“So back to the mission at hand.” Connie held his coilgun out in front of his waist with both hands and pointed it toward the destination. “It’s a little clearer than I’d like, so no dawdling, ladies. We hoof it across the gap double time and regroup in those bushes. You got it?”
“Aye,” Pete said. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”
“Yeah, right,” Joe muttered under his breath. “More like three times.”
“Let’s go!” Connie stalked back and forth at the edge of the woods. “On my count. One…two…three!”
They took off at a sprint, or at least as fast as they could go over uneven terrain with full packs and a weapon in both hands. Without a pack, Joe easily pulled ahead of his core group until he was up on Danny and Connie’s heels.
The stones crunched behind him along with the sounds of boots pounding the unforgiving earth. Though he should’ve thought better of it, Joe slowed for his friends to catch up.
Pete seemed to be trying to wave him on ahead, but thankfully didn’t rat him out to Connie and Danny by talking.
Joe let Pete fly past, and settled in at the rear behind the girls. With a steady jog, he had no trouble keeping up. He spent a lot of time looking at his boots, though, trying to pick out the smoothest path over the rock-strewn clearing. As a result, the woods snuck up on him.