by Chris Bostic
He choked down his breakfast gravel and tried to focus on more positive things. It wasn’t easy knowing they still had to cross enemy lines. So he settled for not complaining, and resolved to work on the optimistic part later.
CHAPTER 26
“Let’s get a little farther before we bed down for a while,” Connie said, rising to his feet. He swayed unsteadily as the others gathered up their gear. There wasn’t much for Joe and Leisa to collect since they only had helmets to put back on. Pete took a while longer getting his backpack reloaded. To Pete’s chagrin, Connie had insisted they leave no trace behind, even if they really didn’t need a blanket in that kind of weather.
The valley was not as wooded as most. Shorter, scraggly trees were surrounded by tall grasses that swished as the remnants of the squad walked through them. Connie would accept no more help with hiking and made Joe take the lead, followed by Leisa.
Joe noticed several matted down paths through the grass to his left and right. They weaved around the trees, but never seemed to cross over each other. He wondered if they were from the soldiers marching to battle or just the typical game trails that animals might make. Given the seemingly large number, he assumed the worst. That was reinforced by the recollection that he hadn’t seen more than a stray bird over all his days in the field.
He wondered if the fighting had scared the animals off, or if the enemy really did eat anything that moved. After what he’d witnessed when they had rescued Connie, he wasn’t so sure that was the case anymore.
“There’s a little knob up ahead,” Connie called forward. “Let’s get up in there and get a better look at the rest of the valley.”
“Sounds good.” Joe left the current trail to veer through the tall grass for the base of the mound.
He crossed over another trail, and noticed they all seemed to skirt around the knob. He wondered if that was a good sign, but kept his thoughts to himself.
As the sun finally peeped over the distant hill mass, Joe reached the base of the hillock. The grassy mound climbed maybe thirty feet in elevation, and was sprinkled with scattered trees. No bigger than a football field, it wouldn’t take but a couple minutes to cross. Right on time, if the savages were on their way back from fighting, Joe thought.
He trudged up the grassy slope and began working his way toward the far side.
“This is far enough,” Connie said, his voice sounding surprisingly weak. Joe turned to find him sucking hard for air after the short, shallow incline.
“You okay, Sarge?”
“Not great.” He staggered to the closest tree and leaned heavily against the trunk. “The pain’s coming back.”
Leisa hurried to him, beating Joe to his side.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“Kinda, but not really.” Connie slid down to the ground with his back still resting against the tree. “It’s like some kind of painkiller is wearing off. Everything just throbs.”
“Well it could be more than the fall,” Joe said. “You were shot. Is that okay?”
“I barely have a scar,” Connie said. “It’s weird, but I know that wound is fine. I’m just sore…and tired.”
“So we’re stopping?” Pete said, finally joining the group.
“We can rest a long time,” Leisa said to Connie.
“Not too long, soldier.” He closed his eyes but kept talking. “Maybe you should go on ahead a little bit. See what the valley looks like on the other side of this knob and report back to me.”
“Yes, sir,” Leisa said, and snapped off a salute that Connie couldn’t see.
“Go with her, Joe.”
“Yes, sir.”
Connie’s eyes popped open. He looked them both over and added, “Be careful, and don’t do anything you shouldn’t be doing.” He closed his eyes again. “You know what I mean.”
Pete gave Joe a curious look, but didn’t say a word. Joe shrugged to make it seem like Connie was being his usual bossy self and nothing more.
Leaving Pete to rest alongside Connie, Joe and Leisa slipped across the hillock toward the far side. Joe took the lead, but slowed so Leisa could come alongside as soon as they were safely out of view from the others.
He reached out and took her hand. Their fingers locked tightly together, but Leisa kept her eyes glued on the open woods around them. Joe slowed even more, trying to move as stealthily as he could while still keeping hold of her.
Once they crested the mound to stare down a shallow slope to the valley floor, Joe came to a halt. Through the gaps in the trees, it seemed as though the rest of the valley was almost as wide open as a farmer’s field from back around his old village.
Joe moved forward at a crouch, pulling Leisa behind him. He finally stopped just short of a low, bushy tree. The branches nearly touched the ground, which seemed perfect for concealment. Better yet, it promised a cleaner view of the valley from underneath.
He had to drop her hand long enough to cast his helmet aside and crawl under the branches, and rolled to his side to hold the branch up while she joined him.
Joe found her hand again, and pulled her close. Their shoulders touched, hands held in front as they stared out across the valley.
Shorter grass waved in a gentle breeze. It was at least a couple hundred yards from the base of the knob to the start of a steep, tree-covered slope on the far side of the valley. Joe imagined farmers cutting and baling hay, maybe herding free-ranging cattle in the quiet valley, but he hadn’t seen a cow since he had been a toddler. To keep the cows safer from predators, supposedly, they never made it out of a pen—much like certain segments of the Republic’s population.
Leisa squeezed Joe’s hand. He nudged her with his shoulder and forgot all about cattle pens and other prisoners behind barbed wire.
“So…is this something Connie thinks we shouldn’t be doing?” Leisa whispered, looking at their intertwined fingers. She grinned, forming the cutest dimples in her cheeks.
He surprised himself and Leisa when he couldn’t help admitting, “There’s so many things I want to be doing to you…I mean with you.” He swallowed to hide his embarrassment, and squeezed her hand. “I think this is the safest.”
“Oh, my.” Leisa’s cheeks glowed sunburn red. “You’ve been thinking about, uhm, this for a while, huh?”
“Pretty much the last couple hours…and the whole month before that.” He swallowed down the unexpected nervousness and cracked a smile. “Seems like I might have a problem.”
“Hmmm. Sounds like a real problem, but nothing I can’t fix.”
“We should probably get back.” Joe regretted saying it, but knew they were expected back soon. “This was supposed to be a quick scouting mission.”
“Uh huh. Scouting…”
Leisa leaned in closer, turning her head to bring her lips to his. He made her wait, fighting the urge to close the gap and mash his lips on hers. If it went that far, he knew there might be no stopping.
He brought his free hand up to cup her cheek in a feeble attempt to replace burning desire with a simple affectionate touch. She kissed him anyway.
Heat exploded within him, and in seconds he rolled on top of her. Joe dropped her hand to run his own along the seam where her uniform shirt met her pants.
His hand snaked under her armor. She quivered at the touch. He slid his hand along her smooth, bare skin, reaching ever higher along her side. And inadvertently tickled her.
She pulled away, trying to stifle a laugh. And then he froze.
“What?” she looked up at his taut face.
“Movement. In the woods.”
He slid off her slowly. She rolled to face forward. In the trees along the far side of the field, endless mustard-colored uniforms spewed forth like water flowing downhill.
“Unholy…” Joe lost the ability to speak, this time for an entirely different reason.
“We need to get outta here,” Leisa said, but he held her down.
“It’s too late. We’re pretty much surrounded.”
“Yeah, but…” Leisa stammered as she stared at the savages flooding into the edge of the field.
“They won’t wait in the open. If our hovers are flying, it’ll be too easy to blast ‘em.”
“We need to tell the others,” Leisa said, and Joe agreed with that. At the very least, the whole group needed to hide themselves as well as they could.
While he crawled backwards to get from underneath the tree, Joe noticed something peculiar. The troops quickly formed into lines as they emerged from the woods, and took off across the grass like a hundred skinny freight trains.
The tracks through the field suddenly made sense to Joe, and he grabbed Leisa’s arm to stop her.
“They won’t come up here,” he said, hoping more than knowing for certain. She looked at him anxiously, and opened her mouth to object. He spoke first. “Remember the tracks in the grass?”
She nodded and looked back at the oncoming horde.
“They’ll pass us by. None of them came to the knob.”
“Except the one we made,” she argued. “They could see it.”
“Oh, crap. Why’d you have to say that?”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, we’re screwed either way.”
“Now who’s looking on the bright side?”
She shushed him and stared back toward the enemy. Silently, they agreed to leave Pete and Connie sleeping back on the other side of the mound. Joe knew the guys were fairly secluded in their own spot, and it wasn’t worth a quick movement to tell them the obvious. But then he remembered his helmet. He slowly reached back to retrieve it.
After pulling the helmet on, he whispered into the microphone, “Pete. Wake up.” He shook his head in response to Leisa’s unasked question. “Pete, you’ve gotta wake up. C’mon.” But he couldn’t rouse his buddy.
Connie would have answered if he still had his helmet, he thought, but quickly cast it aside. It was too late for that.
The mustard-colored trains had quickly closed the distance. It would be suicide to run for his comrades. Those guys would find out soon enough, or hopefully be passed by without ever knowing.
Joe and Leisa locked hands again and kept their heads low to the ground. The musty dirt smell embedded itself so deeply in Joe’s nose that he wondered if he’d ever get it out. But mostly he wondered if he’d live through the next few minutes.
Several of the columns came straight for the mound. It wasn’t exactly processional precision. The enemy cut crooked paths across the field, and none of them marched with the typical left-right-left gait of soldiers on a parade march.
Leisa gripped his hand tighter as the leading elements shuffled closer to the base of the mound. Their column, like all the others, stretched the entire way back to the far hillside, where more savages pooled at the edge waiting to join one of the walking trains.
Twenty yards away, a couple columns still came for the hillock. They were so close Joe couldn’t make out the trails in the grass.
He held his breath. Leisa’s grip tightened to the point that he lost feeling in his fingers. He buried his nose in the soil and watched the final steps that could spell their doom.
And then they turned. The columns split, one going each direction around the base of the hill. Joe kept rigid in stunned disbelief as an entire column streamed past the base of the mound mere footsteps away.
Once his breathing was under control, gazing through his eyebrows, he studied the foreign troops. Their rounded heads were absent of any emotion. None talked in any kind of language, though Joe noticed a faint hum carrying through the crowd.
As the noise grew louder, Joe observed slightly shorter men with more normal-shaped, oblong heads spaced at intervals throughout the lines. The sound reminded him of the noise Connie’s healer had made, like some kind of calming tune rather than the abrupt chirps and tongue clicks he had become so familiar with. But none of these shorter men were in the long flowing robes.
Everyone was dressed in the same dirty uniforms, which seemed to be one piece like the jumpsuit a mechanic or other type of repairman might wear back in the Republic. None of the creatures filled out their suits, as they were all lanky of body though round of head. Even the shorter humming men were skinny like Pete.
Each soldier wore a backpack of the same mustard color. The packs were seemingly loaded down, which only served to make the soldiers look that much weaker. But Joe knew better.
With narrow eyes facing down, the roundheads appeared to only watch the feet of the soldier in front of them. It made Joe feel even safer from his concealed position, until he noticed that the shorter men had a tendency to turn their heads about. Then one exchanged some kind of hand gesture with another similar man.
“They’re so quiet,” Leisa whispered. “Like ghosts or phantoms or something.”
“It’s so unnatural,” Joe said, thinking of the way the Regulators usually talked and jostled as they marched.
“What are you two talking about?” Joe inadvertently rustled the branch of the tree as Pete’s voice blared in his ears.
“Shhh,” he said. “There’s savages all around us.” Seeing how they had treated Connie, he was torn about still using that term but was too panicked to find another.
“Where? Oh…”
Having already put on her helmet to listen, Leisa sharply whispered, “Stay down and make sure Connie does too.”
“They’re not coming up on the knob,” Joe said. “We might be okay if you sit tight and zip your lips.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. I see that.”
“Good. Now stay quiet ‘til they’re gone,” Joe said.
“Good call.”
“Quiet,” Leisa chided, and shook her head in disgust.
The far hillside finally fell silent as the last of the enemy soldiers had formed up into columns and filed out across the open field. The ends of their lines were half the distance to the knob.
“About time,” Joe whispered, only to see more mustard-colored men scamper out into the open on the far side. “Dang.”
They seemed more disorganized, like maybe the last elements of a rear guard fleeing from an enemy advance. The newly hopeful Joe stared in bright-eyed anticipation, and pointed toward the new arrivals to direct Leisa’s attention to them.
“They’re like chickens with their heads cut off,” she whispered.
“Say what?”
“Chickens. When you butcher a chicken, they’ll still run around all crazy like that for a little while.”
“Headless?”
“Yeah. I guess you never-”
“No.”
Leisa’s description was a bizarre visual to Joe, but it helped him get a sense of the situation. The newest soldiers were clearly disorganized. Rather than forming up into lines, they seemed to resist the urge the earlier soldiers had shown.
Our guys have finally routed them, Joe thought, hoping the savages were on the run.
He wanted to tell Leisa that they would be safely back within their own lines in no time, but the sharp crack of a gunshot stole the words away.
A mustard-uniformed soldier dropped to the ground. As Joe watched, three more of the enemy crumpled in a heap, followed by the rolling boom of the shots.
He wanted to think it was the Regulators boiling up out of the hills, but no familiar green uniforms ever materialized. Instead, he watched in horror as a shorter man in a mustard jumpsuit strolled right up to a frantic soldier and shot him in the head.
When that victim hit the ground, the rest of the group abruptly stopped running in hysterical circles. Whistling followed a couple more gunshots, and the remaining soldiers formed up in a neat, single line. To Joe’s disbelief, they started marching across the open field without a care in the world for their fallen comrades.
CHAPTER 27
“What was that all about?” Leisa uttered.
Pete broke radio silence. “What was what? And who’s shooting?”
“They just shot down their own men,” Joe mumbled
.
“It sure got them back in line in a hurry.” Leisa exhaled exaggeratedly. “Wow, just wow.”
“I guess they don’t call them savages for nothing,” Joe said. “Could you imagine?”
“That’s some kind of sick discipline.” Leisa let go of his hand. She held up her fingers in front of her face. “Shot for not following orders…for breaking the rules. Imagine what they would do to-”
Joe interrupted her with a finger mashed over his lips. He didn’t necessarily think she was going to blurt out anything about their recent inappropriateness to Pete, but he wasn’t willing to take that chance.
They stayed put for a while longer, watching as the once scattered group filed neatly past the mound. Though their comrades’ blood had been shed, none of the soldiers showed a trace of emotion. When the shorter men followed with guns pointed at the ready, herding their soldiers onward like cattle, Joe didn’t find them so human-like anymore. Though they had fought like tigers, he wondered if the razor-teethed roundheads were the more compassionate of the two groups—much the way his own officers could be so brutal.
Joe and Leisa stayed under the tree until the valley in front of them was empty. The gunshots had drawn no one else to the area, and it became depressingly apparent that the Regulators weren’t right on the tails of the enemy.
The savages must be switching out units, Joe thought. He figured that group was going back to the camp to rest, while other mustard-colored soldiers probably slipped through the woods to take their place. And the Regulators would have another epic battle on their hands with fresh enemy troops once night fell.
But it was a long time until dusk, and Joe could wait no longer. With a nod to Leisa, he crawled back out from under the tree. He offered her a hand up, and kept a tight grasp on her until they were close to where they’d left Pete and Connie.
With another wordless move, Leisa dropped his hand and slipped behind Joe. Seconds later they found Pete slumped against a tree across from Connie.