The Children's War

by C. P. Boyko

  Lieutenant Ryyss appeared and ordered everyone to stand to. Raof cursed her luck without surprise, and began to reassemble her weapon. She supposed, as she always supposed, that this was the end. Whatever was coming, she would be the first one, and probably the only one, to die.

  She found a place on the parapet beneath a useless, collapsed firing slit. She had forgotten her helmet. Lieutenant Ryyss told them to conserve their ammunition, to hold their fire till the attackers offered a clear target. To Raof this sounded like a call to defeat.

  There were moments when Triple-Time loved the war. She loved to climb a mountain in the rain under full pack. She loved to watch an airplane fall blazing from the sky. She loved to sit with a beer in the refectory and listen to The Professor or Jaywalk or The Pacifist lecture, better than any teacher she’d ever had, on gardening or carpentry or poetry. She loved to leg-wrestle, and win. She loved to fire her rifle on its bipod at a moving target. And she loved nothing better than to march with impunity in the midst of a full company across a strange landscape at twilight. But she hated all these chickenshit nighttime skulking platoon-sized missions. She longed for a good, honest daylight street fight, kicking in doors with bayonets fixed.

  She vented her frustration on Teacher’s Pet, thumping her and cursing her every time she came too close. “Stop bunching up on me,” she hissed. “Maintain the fucking interval, cuntpig.” —“All right, all right,” said T.P, who found the hardest part of night patrols to be the feeling of isolation. “Fucking sorry.” —“Shut your fucking spunk-traps back there,” said The Colonel, who was, against all regulations, literally leading the section by walking point.

  The Colonel had been seething since her promotion to lance corporal. She did not herself realize that she was angry; she did not permit herself introspection, but carried out her duties with rabid punctiliousness.

  She had wanted nothing more than to be made section commander (and perhaps one day platoon commander), but somehow she had never imagined that the honor would come at the expense of another soldier’s life. The promotion had been further spoiled for her by the ceremony, at which Lieutenant General Roseberry, in front of journalists and camera operators, had addressed her by War Juice’s name, and conferred on her War Juice’s medal of valor. Corporal Cobweb had quietly asked her not to make a fuss. So Lance Corporal Colonel, with opaque self-loathing, wore the medal, and became a more avid soldier than ever. The troops in her section noticed a change in her, but attributed this to the corrupting influence of power.

  She waited, poised, for G section to start firing; then she leaped up, bellowing, and with a wave like a swimmer’s stroke, led her ten troops forward in a short rush over the hard, uneven ground. She tossed a grenade with her whole body, then, still upright and silhouetted against the sky, let off several rifle rounds from the hip. “Come on, you shitbags! Break some fucking hearts!” She emptied a magazine before the others, taking aim from a prone position, joined in. The awe, pride, and annoyance that they felt towards their reckless leader were mitigated somewhat by the fact that there was no return fire from the outpost. Once everyone had fired a few rounds and tossed a grenade or two, they rushed back to their departure point, where they reloaded, breathless and elated.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” conceded Jimjam.

  Tolb knew that Boorq was dead. The pity she felt for her friend welled over and became self-pity, which, combined with a strange, placeless pain, convinced her that she too was dying. Outrage brought to her eyes tears that were spilled in mournful impotence. Her mind clutched at memories and unfulfilled plans, struggling in this last spasm of consciousness to impose some order upon or extract some significance from her life. She thought of her mother, and of her sister, and of her boyfriend, and, imagining their sorrow, felt sorrier for herself. She thought of all the meals she would never taste, and the money she would never spend. The franticness she felt proved that there would be no afterlife.

  The shelling had ended, and now she felt Boorq’s lifeless body being dragged off her, the boots scraping the back of her neck. She lay still and small, eyes closed, thoughts clamped, averting her attention from the sounds of the enemy soldiers ransacking Boorq’s corpse a few feet away. She was not here.

  “Look at all this shit,” said Upsize indignantly. “She’s got a bunch of our shit.” —“Souvenirs,” said H. Crap, handling sadly the trench knife, field manual, and captain’s stripes. —“Well, fuck,” said The Pacifist. “They’re no worse than we are.” —“Fucking photos probably aren’t hers either,” said Fidget, taking them. —“This looks like this letter is written in suprapodean, too,” guessed Sancty, taking it.

  —Upsize and Pschaw bickered over which of them would get the dead woman’s .31-caliber rifle. “I touched it first,” said Upsize. —“So? I touched it last,” said Pschaw, touching it.

  —Meanwhile, Tinkerling and The Professor hauled the other enemy soldier out of the hole.

  I’m dead, thought Tolb, going limp; I’m already dead. But as they rolled her onto her back, the fear of being stripped or maimed or hacked at for mementos made her leap up screaming, scrabbling at her web belt for her bayonet.

  The suprapodeans staggered back, cursing and fumbling for their rifles. “Don’t fucking move!” —“Hands the fuck up!”

  Tolb, shivering, slouched in submission as pain racked her innards.

  “For the love of God, nobody fire,” said H. Crap, addressing Fidget in particular. “We’re in a goddamn bumpkin’s firing circle here.”

  “These devious fucking fuckers!” said Upsize. “Pretending to be fucking dead like that!” —They had all heard stories of the enemy’s deceitfulness, but had not known till now whether to fully believe them. The Pacifist was most surprised; she had often argued, from the evidence of their literature in translation, that the infrapodeans were in fact more civilized and sophisticated than her own compatriots. She felt personally betrayed.

  “Don’t shoot,” said Tolb. “I’m hurt.”

  “Shut your fucking spewpipe,” said The Professor. —“Yeah, or speak fucking human,” said Pschaw, jabbing Tolb with her rifle barrel. —“Fuck off, you guys,” said The Pacifist in disgust. “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s hurt?”

  “Cork your bunghole, Pacie,” said H. Crap quietly. “We’re taking this piece of crap prisoner.”

  Pschaw peered menacingly into the prisoner’s face. Tolb gazed back, seeing in the protuberant brow and slack lips proof of the enemy’s bestial cruelty. A whimper escaped her, less now from pain than from shame and hopelessness. And yet there was an unconscious element of craven calculation even in her weakness: perhaps if she showed herself pathetic enough, they would leave her alone. “I need a doctor,” she blubbed. —“You shut your fucking bunghole,” said Pschaw.

  A flare went up; Tolb flinched, and Fidget fired.

  H. Crap said, “Fuck.”

  “Shit,” said Fidget. “Sorry, LC.”

  They crowded around the prisoner, who lay squirming on her back, one hand clawing at the frozen earth, the other clamped over her shattered, bleeding chin, her eyes liquid and bright with reflected flare. Tolb, looking up at their calm, quizzical faces, felt a huge and expanding panic, as of gas pressurizing a cracked container.

  “I thought she was running.” —“She wasn’t running any fucking place.” —“She sure as fuck isn’t running any place now.” —“Look,” laughed Tinkerling, “she is trying to run away!” —Tolb, kicking out one leg, was pushing herself inch by inch along the ground.

  “Someone should put her out of her fucking misery,” said The Pacifist.

  The dying woman was making sticky, wet snoring sounds. Her inability to speak made her seem subhuman. She stank of blood and shit. They looked away, moved more by disgust than pity.

  Death was worse than Tolb had imagined; and this was not yet the worst.

  A volley of small-arms fire
from the direction of the outpost recalled H. Crap to her duty. “Come on, we’re behind schedule.” —“What about this bitch?” —“Just leave her.” —“What about her stuff?”

  One of the medipodean stretcher-bearers asked hopefully, “We take back casualty-casualty?” —“No.”

  Left alone, Tolb rallied. The pain, once she had taken its measure, was sufferable. Perhaps death was not inevitable. She decided to live. She would not let herself become a corpse—a lump of offal, exposed to the public, unowned, unowning, bereft of dignity and rights. She would not let death defile her.

  From quickening breaths and slackening muscles she wove a dwindling braid of determination. Ten minutes later, she became unconscious. Her last sensations were of a presence like her father’s, and a smell like mown grass.

  Only one grenade—The Colonel’s—had passed over the parapet and fallen inside the outpost. No one was hurt; but the lieutenant, leaping away from it, had dropped Sergeant Montazo’s field glasses. Montazo fussed and fiddled with them loyally, but finally admitted, after many vacillating fits of hope and despair, that they were smashed to uselenessness.

  “Eyes up, Sergeant,” said Ryyss, brisk and unrepentant. “That was just probing fire, but they’ll attack in earnest any minute now. Hold your fire till you see them coming.”

  Montazo peered through the firing slit, her blindness made total by emotion. She felt resentful, and guilty, and giddy, and frightened, and powerful. She felt insubordinate. The nearest she came to acknowledging this feeling was a wistful, idealized memory of Lieutenant Farl, nobly urging them on at Hill 68.

  She told Yumi, the radio operator, to stay close.

  “I guess this is it,” said Meck to Alcott. “Hey: I love you.” —“Aw, shut it,” said Alcott, kindly, though embarrassed. They hardly knew each other.

  H. Crap signaled that they had come far enough. The Professor lay down, propped on elbows, and readied her rifle. It was only two weeks since she had killed Winky, who, blinded by smoke, had come rushing at her screaming like an invader. She had told no one what she had done, and not even Winky ever knew; but she had vowed never again to release her safety catch. Now, the first time this vow was tested, she found herself conforming to habit and obeying orders. She could hardly do otherwise without drawing attention to herself. But she aimed harmlessly high; she would not shoot even an invader except in self-defense.

  The Pacifist also aimed high, believing it a condition of her own survival that she not kill anyone in this war. The others aimed carelessly, and at H. Crap’s signal, fired carelessly at the side of the blockhouse, wanting only to fulfill their obligation and retreat.

  The defenders, however, keyed up by Ryyss’s cautions, believed that at least a company was against them. Those on the southwest wall, led by Sergeant Montazo, fired back liberally—frightening themselves and startling those on the other walls, who also started firing, frightening themselves and startling others. For half a minute, Ryyss’s screams of “Hold your fire!” went unheard, and, for another half minute, unheeded.

  H section sprawled wriggling and twisting beneath the onslaught. The torrent of bullets twanging and whistling over them made as much noise in the aggregate as the roar of the machine guns and rifles. The Professor cursed in fury at what she felt was an unprovoked attack. The Pacifist was astounded and indignant. Tinkerling, a recruit, cried “Stop it!” repeatedly. No civilized person would heap such hurt and destruction upon her worst enemy; no sane person could treat even an animal this way. How could the world hold so much malice? “Look what you’re doing!” she sobbed. Sancty, the other recruit, remained unshaken. She was only relieved that this, her first firefight, was no worse. She had expected something more unspeakably terrifying than what was, after all, just bits of metal flying through the air. And for the time being, there was nothing she could do; the unusual lack of responsibility was almost cozy.

  H. Crap spent one pulse beat cursing herself for leading the section too near the outpost; then she became practical, calling for covering fire and a staggered retreat as soon as they could lift their heads.

  Pschaw called out to Upsize. —“What?” —“Let me shoot the .31 for a while.”

  To Montazo, the enemy’s shouts sounded like battle cries, and the flash of their covering fire, when it began, appeared to be coming from no farther than the other side of the parapet. She dragged Yumi by the radio into the blockhouse, screaming grid coordinates into the handset.

  The field artillery CO was bemused. “That’s your location, Nubbin. What direction and distance from you, over?” —“Zero fucking distance!” came the reply. “Put it all on us! They’re coming down our fucking throats! Give it to us now! Now now NOW NOW NOW!”

  The artillery XO shrugged to conceal a shudder. “Sounds like a real shitstorm. Better give it to them.”

  “Now what the fucking fuck?” said Corporal Cobweb. “Is that our arty?” —“That’s theirs,” said Shitjob. “Those’re three-fifty-fours. Listen.” —Jaywalk agreed. “That’s enemy ordnance, all right.” —“That’s what I thought,” said Cobweb. “So what the fucking fuck are they doing?” —No one could say.

  Cobweb, muttering sighs, radioed the MAC command post to confirm that the outpost was in fact being held by the enemy. Neither of her other two sections had returned to the rendezvous, and now H section appeared to be storming the target singlehandedly. She should have known better than to volunteer for this horseshit mission with this bunglefuck platoon; but she’d decided that the only way to escape this lonely goddamn post was by demonstrating some zeal. Unfortunately, it was also a good way to get herself killed.

  Staff Sergeant Ciborsck betrayed neither surprise nor uncertainty. As if it had been his plan all along to incite the enemy to shell himself, he ordered Corporal Cobweb to take the outpost as soon as the bombardment abated. “What’s their strength, anyway?” —Because her troops were listening, Cobweb did not exaggerate. “About a platoon, I’d guess. At least one machine gun.” —“That’s what we figured. Capitalize, Corporal! This is our chance.” —Through a stiff mouth, Cobweb said, “Yes, sir. Out.”

  For five seconds, she pondered, champing her teeth. Was there any way out of it?

  There wasn’t. So make the best of it.

  She made a short speech, grinning grimly. In closing, she said, “I’ll be honest with you. Till this moment, this was a horseshit fucking mission. But they’ve let us off the leash. This is it, ladies. We’ve got opportunity by the fuzz.”

  Parade-Ground was told to stay behind and wait for G section. She did not reply. She was listening in a crescendo of amazement to the twittering chorus of flying shrapnel, of which every voice was distinctly eloquent, so that the night seemed swarming with the chatter of frisky elves. Christmas Tree thumped her, and she spent a moment rediscovering her own language. “What is it?” —“If they’re not here in ten minutes,” said Cobweb, “rejoin us and H section. Got it?” —“Yes, ma’am. Ten minutes, rejoin us and H section.”

  When she began to shamble after them, Christmas Tree hissed and gestured for her to stay put. Though C.T. had misgivings about leaving her alone, she supposed that she would be safer here than in combat.

  “Ten minutes, rejoin us,” muttered Parade-Ground, sinking to a crouch. “Ten minutes, H section.” The words seemed loaded with importance; and their importance only loomed larger as, with each repetition, their context and meaning faded to obscurity. Soon they were only a string of syllables, an ancient incantation performing itself upon the wondrous instrument of lips, tongue, and teeth. And even when she doubled over to vomit, it was to the rhythm of those sacred sounds.

  Klipton lifted woozily her ringing head. There was a sharp pain in her hip which she ignored, both from squeamishness and from obstinacy. The only wound bad enough to stop her would be the one that stopped her.

  Without turning her gaze from the firing slit, she called out
to Sunachs on her right and Raof on her left. Sunachs was fine; from Raof there was no reply. “Raof, you all right?” —“She’s done and gone,” called Osini. “Let her be.”

  —Klipton spared a glance, and saw the limp body with the top of its head sheared off, bearing now no resemblance to Raof but the uniform. —“That’ll come as no surprise to her,” said Laskantan. —“Cover her field with me, Osini,” said Klipton. “They’ll be coming any second now.” —“Teach a dog to shit,” muttered Osini.

  Solzi was moaning and calling for help.

  Elzby shouted, “Aiersbax!”; “Elzby!” shouted Aiersbax. —“You’re all right, you farthole?” —“Nip it, you snotwhistle. I’m fine.”

  Meck was hit. “I’m hit,” she bawled. Her tunic was wet with blood, glistening like oil in the moonlight. At least it wasn’t day; in daylight her blood would be red. She was afraid to move, afraid to probe the damage. There passed over her a cloud of horror at her own body, as if it belonged to someone else. —“Where are you hit?” asked Alcott. —“I don’t know.” —“Well, where does it hurt?” —“I don’t know.” —“Then swallow it,” said Alcott. “You’re okay, for God’s sake. Look vigilant.”

  “I’m out of tracers,” cried Burnok. “Does anybody have any more tracers?” —“Forget tracers,” said Kellek. “Does anyone have any goddamn ammo at all? I’m down to half a mag here.” —“That’s half more than I’ve got,” said Sunachs, pumping her cocking handle in demonstration. —“Then go scrounge some the fuck up for us.” —“Don’t move,” said Sergeant Gijalfur. “Throw a grenade. Throw rocks! Use your bayonet if you have to. Just nobody move!” —After a moment, Sunachs asked if anyone had an extra grenade. —“Goddammit,” said Gijalfur. “Here.” She slid a flare gun towards Sunachs. “Just hold your goddamn position.”