Rescue Mission

by Pete Aldin

He glanced up at the corporal in the khaki uniform opposite. The poor old fellow was not evil—he was not to be hated. He was simply protecting his country from invaders.

  Perhaps he was out scavenging for some small community of breeding-age people, while others protected them from kidnap and a new form of slavery. Anyone who could find and control breeders would inherit the earth. 'Women under fifty,' Kim's Colonel had once said. 'This is what we hunt.'

  Women, he thought. How long since I've seen one, touched one? All curves and silky hair. He sighed again. Soldiers. It's always other soldiers.

  Movement drew his attention back to the man in khaki. He was fumbling a pistol from its holster. Kim shifted his own weapon and felt a pang of pity for his enemy; at this distance, a revolver was no match for a rifle. Perhaps his enemy realized that too, turning and making for the cover of a nearby car wreck.

  It was the perfect opportunity to pick him off, now while his back was turned. But Kim scraped the sole of one boot on the missile-chafed asphalt and wondered again what had drawn the other man here.

  Kim had felt the pull of the Bridge as soon as he'd seen it, drawn by something instinctive, irrational. Adrift without the leadership of officers long dead, he'd had no tactical reason to come out here. He certainly hadn't expected to find anything, much less another man in uniform.

  He settled his rifle stock on the roadway, leaning the barrel against his thigh while he fished in his belt-pouches for his cigarette packet. He slid one out, lit up and drew deeply, all before the other man made it to the relative shelter of the burned and buckled Toyota.

  The poor old fellow looked like he'd sustained an injury to one leg.

  Might be arthritis?

  He arched his back in a sympathetic stretch.

  On a whim, he raised the packet in the air.

  The corporal didn't notice immediately, too busy positioning his feet and hands—moving in stages—until his elbows rested on the car bonnet, bracing the pistol. When he noticed Kim's gesture, he gawked, eyes growing round. For a long moment, Kim thought his enemy might not understand, or might think he was being mocked.

  Then the man pushed himself upright and rounded the car. Kim didn't speak a word of the local language, but the signals the corporal made communicated clearly enough: Would I like a cigarette? Hell, yes.

  Kim smiled around his smoke. It was weeks since he'd seen another human being, and that had been another old man in an ill-fitting khaki uniform. He'd shot him dead. He'd had to. Now the need to be courteous was rising up to overwhelm his battle-habit, like a long-forgotten memory surfacing to blur present-sight.

  For a long time, they regarded each other and the gap between them. How to get a cigarette across that yaw?

  Younger men might have climbed up and across the remains of the gantries, meeting somewhere in the middle. The two old soldiers would have to rely on brains where brawn had deserted them.

  In the end, the pulley system took them over an hour to craft. The spools of fishing line which Kim had picked up on his travels combined well with pieces of rubble and a loose cable drooping diagonally across the breach. He detached the belt-pouch with his cigarettes and lighter inside, attached it to the line.

  The rig worked well. They congratulated each other with nods and smiles. The corporal sent the pouch with the cigarettes back across the gap before he too lit up.

  Upon retrieving his pouch, Kim discovered an additional item inside: one of those small bottles that populated hotel room fridges. His enemy raised a similar bottle in toast. They drank together and rested from their labors, rubbing distractedly at the aches and pains their endeavors had caused. Kim was very glad he had decided against climbing across.

  When the booze was gone, he stepped closer to the torn edge of the roadway. Only a few years ago, he wouldn't have been able to see anything from the middle lanes of the Bridge. Now he could not only see the water far below, but the missile-strike had smashed away more of the structure to his left, revealing a small island and a partial view of other small promontories lining the water's edge beyond that. He drank in a panorama of greens blues grays browns, painted here and there with the brush of human 'progress'.

  It occurred to him that the beauty of the harbor would survive after the last remaining people were long gone. This filled him with a strange hope, the emotion spider-crawling its way up his chest and constricting his throat. He found water in his eyes. At least human insanity hadn't ruined everything.

  The cigarette had burned its way to the filter now. He dropped it onto the road and captured it beneath his boot, grinding it into the asphalt before the wind could snatch it away and dump it in the harbor. He considered lighting another—cancer was the least of his worries—but the lateness of the hour turned his thoughts to shelter.

  He regarded the enemy a few moments more.

  Nine bullets left. One less bullet meant one less rabbit dinner. It seemed a waste—of bullets and of effort. Actually, it seemed rude, especially after sharing a smoke and a drink.

  Kim found himself shouldering his rifle. He straightened, snapped off a salute and trudged back along the roadway.

  For six days, the two men met this way. Each day they shared booze and smokes. Once, they shared a rabbit Kim had roasted over a fire that morning, hunched in the broken corner of a city bank. Another day, they split a six-pack the corporal had found in his travels.

  The beer was warm. The other man didn't seem to care and neither did Kim.

  On the seventh day, the corporal didn't appear.

  Kim waited for several long hours, until storm clouds rose threateningly in the distance to spoil the makings of a spectacular sunset. It was time to make ready for whatever sleep he could snatch in the scant shelter of the ruined bank. He turned and tramped back toward the southeastern pylon where Bridge joined land, fingering the cigarette that had remained unlit all day.

  What had happened to his enemy, his polite and courteous enemy? Accident? Heart-attack?

  A further possibility caused him a sharp intake of breath. Perhaps there was another man in a mottled green uniform wandering around this city; perhaps the two had met overnight. At a distance, the corporal might have mistaken such a person for his newfound drinking companion and waved hello, when he should have been reaching for his pistol. The thought made Kim's stomach churn.

  At first he thought the rumbling was distant thunder. When the army truck appeared from behind other vehicle corpses back along the roadway toward the city, he froze. He nudged the rifle's safety as the truck shouldered past a burnout Ford and lumbered to a stop near him.

  He squinted. Yes, behind the wheel sat the fellow from the Bridge.

  But was that cause for relief or alarm?

  The engine stopped running with a sigh and a gurgle. The driver's door creaked open. The corporal climbed carefully down from the cab and steadied himself. He put a hand to his hip.

  Kim raised the rifle a few degrees.

  The corporal's hand came up bearing a large bottle of scotch.

  And both men smiled.