In At the Death sa-4

by Harry Turtledove

  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.

  Squidface 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 m
eantime, 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, that 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.

  "Sн." 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.

  "Sн," 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."

  Blackledge had to wait for a Confederate officer to answer that; it wasn't his place. After a couple of minutes, somebody did: "We're ordered to hold this position. We don't reckon you can drive us out. If you want to try, come ahead."

  The lieutenant in green-gray saluted. "You asked for it. Now you'll get it." He turned around and went back to his own lines.

  "Hunker down, boys! Hunker down tight!" Sergeant Blackledge yelled. "We went and pissed the damnyankees off, an' they're gonna try and make us pay for it."

  Jorge pulled his entrenching tool off his belt and went to work with it. What he could do to improve his foxhole wasn't much, though. What U.S. guns could do to wreck it was liable to be a lot more. And the enemy's cannon wasted little time before they started trying to knock Covington flat again. Jorge swore in English and Spanish when he heard gas shells gurgling in and people shouting out warnings. Gas wouldn't do as much in the rain as it would on a clear day, but he still had to put on his mask. Raindrops on the glass in front of his eyes made him seem to peer through streaked and splattered windows. Could he shoot straight? If he had to, he had to, that was all.

  "Barrels!" That shout filled him with fear, because even with an automatic rifle he couldn't do anything about a barrel. He had to depend on others to take care of that part of the job-and if they didn't, he was dead even though he hadn't made any mistakes.

  But they did. That antibarrel cannon knocked out two more U.S. machines in quick succession. The rest pulled back instead of charging into Covington.

  "You can't answer," Sergeant Blackledge jeered. "You ain't got the balls to answer, you stinking Yankee cocksuckers." Talking through the mask, he sounded as if his voice came from the far side of the moon. That made him seem more scornful, not less.

  No more barrels drew within range of the gun. U.S. infantry didn't swarm forward, either. Machine gunners and riflemen-and the artillery-made the Confederates keep their heads down. Some of the machine guns were captured C.S. weapons. Jorge knew the difference when they fired. His own side's guns spat far more rounds per minute than the ones the USA made.

  Like Blackledge, he thought the U.S. lieutenant was trying to bluff the defenders of Covington out of a position from which they couldn't be forced. The truth turned out to be less simple. With all those shells landing close by, he didn't want to stick up his head and look around. But before long he had to-he could hear something going on to the south.

  Because of what the rain was doing to the lenses on his gas mask, he couldn't see very far. But things weren't going well outside of town, though his ears told him more about that than his eyes could. Barrels were moving forward there-forward from the U.S. point of view, that is. They had plenty of artillery and small-arms support, too.

  What kind of line did the CSA have south of Covington? Jorge didn't know. Up till now, he hadn't worried about it. He realized that maybe he should have. Heavy fire came from a little east of due south. After a while, it came from due south. After another little while, it came from west of due south.

  You didn't have to be a professor with frizzy, uncombed hair and thick glasses to figure out what that meant. The damnyankees had tried to force a breakthrough there, and it looked as if they'd done it. The next interesting question was what they would do with it. They didn't keep anybody waiting long for an answer. Shells and machine-gun bullets came into Covington from the south as well as from the east and north. There was also firing from southwest of town, which wasn't good. If the defenders held their ground much longer, they'd be hanging on to a surrounded town. Those stories didn't have happy endings.

  Other soldiers saw the same thing. They must have-otherwise, why would they start slipping out of Covington to the west? And why would Sergeant Blackledge watch them slip away without ordering them to stop or, just as likely, shooting them in the back?

  "We gonna get orders to pull out, Sarge?" Gabriel Medwick asked.

  "Beats the shit out of me," Blackledge answered. "If we don't, though, we'll spend the rest of the war in a POW camp…if the
Yankees bother taking prisoners. If they don't, we'll be lucky if they waste the time to bury us."

  Jorge didn't worry much about what happened to his body once he was done using it. But he wasn't-nowhere close. And dying to keep a third-rate town out of U.S. hands for a few extra minutes struck him as a waste of his precious and irreplaceable life. "When you gonna go, Sarge?" he called.

  "Pretty damn quick," Blackledge said. "This place ain't worth throwin' myself down the crapper for. Unless somebody orders me to stay, I'm gone." And if somebody did order him, he might suddenly become hard of listening. It wouldn't surprise Jorge at all.

  Before long, a worried-sounding lieutenant said, "We'd better pull back. If we don't, they're liable to cut us off."

  "Would you believe it?" Sergeant Blackledge said. "Boy, if the officers can see it, you know it must be obvious."

  Despite the noncom's sarcasm, Jorge felt better about pulling back with the lieutenant's permission. U.S. forces didn't make it easy. As soon as they realized the Confederates were withdrawing from Covington, men in green-gray pushed into the town from the northeast. Two mortar bombs burst closer to Jorge than he cared to think about. Fragments hissed and snarled past him. He felt a ghostly tug at his trouser leg, and looked down to discover a new tear. But he wasn't bleeding.

  Things got more dangerous, not less, when he left Covington behind. The Yankees who'd broken through to the south lashed the fields with gunfire. Jorge was glad to scramble into a truck and get out of there much faster than he could have hoofed it.

  Gabe Medwick sat across from him. "We got to hold 'em somewheres, or else we ain't gonna keep Atlanta," he said. He might not be bright, but he had no trouble seeing that. Who would?

  "How can we hold, they keep pounding on us like this?" Jorge asked.

  "Beats me." His buddy shrugged. "But if we don't, we won't just lose Atlanta. We'll lose the damn war."

  You also didn't need to be bright to see that. Neither Jorge nor any of the other wet, weary soldiers in the truck tried to argue with him. They'd got out of Covington alive. Right now, that seemed more than enough.