In At the Death sa-4

by Harry Turtledove

  If they'd had barrels of their own, if they'd had air support, if they'd had more ground-pounders, they could have driven the enemy back toward the James. If they'd had all those things here, they also would have had them lots of other places. The war would have looked very different.

  Since they didn't have any reinforcements, they had to wait for the U.S. forces to regroup and take another crack at Buckingham. "Pull back into the woods south of town!" Sergeant Blackledge called. "We'll let them beat on the place while it's empty, then move back into our old holes and give 'em a surprise."

  Smoke from the burning buildings in Buckingham helped screen the withdrawal from Yankee observers. And Blackledge knew just what was coming. More shells, more bombs, more rockets, and more napalm descended on Buckingham. Jorge crossed himself. He was glad to crouch half a mile away from all that destruction.

  As soon as the last fighter-bombers roared off to the north, Sergeant Blackledge yelled, "C'mon! Hustle up! We gotta get back to our places before the enemy infantry starts moving up!"

  Trotting forward, Jorge saw that the antiaircraft gun wouldn't stop any barrels this time around. It lay upside down, the tires on the gun carriage all burnt and melted and stinking. How many stovepipes did the company have? He swore under his breath. The cannon could kill from much farther away than one of those rockets.

  At least no jellied gasoline smoldered in his foxhole. He slid down into it and waited for the push that was bound to come. He felt more resigned than afraid. He wondered why. Probably because he'd been in lots of other bad spots. What was one more? My grave, it could be.

  Not far away, Gabe Medwick was praying. His version of the Lord's Prayer had words a little different from Jorge's. Protestant, the Sonoran thought condescendingly. But both versions meant the same thing, so how much did the words really matter?

  "Hang in there, boys," Hugo Blackledge said. "We been screwin' so long with a limber dick, why the fuck can't we row the damn boat with a rope?" In spite of himself, Jorge laughed. Sometimes obscenity wasn't so far from prayer.

  Here came the damnyankees again. They were more cautious this time-they didn't want another bloody nose. The Confederates in Buckingham held their fire till the enemy soldiers and fighting vehicles got very close. Then they all opened up at once. Howls of dismay from the U.S. soldiers said they'd hoped it would be easy this time. No matter what they hoped, it wasn't.

  A lancehead riding a shaft of fire, a stovepipe rocket incinerated a green-gray barrel. But other U.S. machines sensibly stayed out of stovepipe range. They raked Buckingham with high-explosive rounds and machine-gun bullets. That let Yankee infantry grab a toehold on the north side of town-not enough Confederates could put their heads up to stop the enemy.

  And the Yankees pushed forward to either side of Buckingham, too. There weren't enough men in butternut to hold them back. "Hey, Sarge!" Jorge called urgently. "We done what we could do here, sн?"

  "Bet your ass." Blackledge raised his voice to a formidable roar: "Back! Back, goddammit! We'll make another stand at the next town south, wherever the fuck it is!"

  Disengaging under fire wasn't easy, either. A less experienced outfit might not have been able to bring it off so neatly. But Jorge had plenty of practice making a getaway from overwhelming U.S. strength. So did his buddies. They left the wounded behind for the Yankees to take care of. That gave the hurt soldiers a better chance than they would have had if they got dragged along. The men in green-gray mostly fought fair.

  The ground rose south of Buckingham. No roads led south, only tracks and game trails. The soldiers trudged past a couple of farms carved out of the forest. A woman in homespun stared at them from a cornfield. Was that a pipe in her mouth? Damned if it wasn't. Jorge hoped the Yankees wouldn't shell her farm trying to kill the retreating C.S. soldiers.

  On he went. Armor wouldn't have an easy time coming after him, anyhow. Artillery started probing for the Confederates. Suddenly, Jorge hated the trees. Air bursts were deadly, and the only thing you could do to protect yourself was dig in with a roof over your head. Any hanging branch might touch off a shell and rain fragments down on you.

  A hundred yards away from him, Gabe Medwick fell with a wail, clutching his arm. "No!" Jorge yelled, and rushed over to his friend. When he got there, he saw Gabe had a leg wound, too. With the best will in the world, the kid from Alabama couldn't go on.

  "Hurts," Gabe got out through clenched teeth.

  "I bet it does." Jorge clumsily injected him with morphine, then bandaged the wounds. The leg wasn't too bad. The arm…Jorge hoped Gabe would keep it, but it looked pretty chewed up. "The Yankees, they take care of you," Jorge said, feeling helpless.

  "Don't want nothin' to do with no damnyankees." Gabe sounded like a petulant child.

  "Here." Jorge gave him his canteen and some rations. "You sit tight and yell for them when they get close. Buena suerte, amigo." He hurried away, not knowing what else to say.

  Before long, Jorge got to pick up a canteen from a man an air burst had shredded. There were worse things than getting wounded. The flies were just starting to gather on one of those things.

  Jorge stumbled up to the top of the line of hills and then down the other side. The company, what was left of it, was hopelessly scattered. Through a break in the trees, Jorge caught a glimpse of a town down below. "That place is where we're going!" Hugo Blackledge yelled. "We'll form up there and figure out what the hell to do next."

  What could they do? Jorge had no idea. But he had a target now, somewhere to go. As he picked his way through thicker stands of timber, the town disappeared, but he could always find it again. It looked bigger than Buckingham, not that that was saying much.

  When he drew closer, he got a glimpse of armor in the town. He'd wondered when he would see more of it. Hell, he'd wondered if the Confederates had any armor left in central Virginia. There were already soldiers in the streets, too. Maybe the CSA could throw one more rally together. Even after you thought your side had done everything it could, it kept surprising you.

  The first few men from the company, Jorge among them, had come out onto open ground within a quarter of a mile of the town when Sergeant Blackledge let out a theatrical wail of despair: "They're Yankees!"

  And they were. They even had some sort of portable PA system. "Surrender!" somebody blared. "Surrender or die! First, last, and only warning! There is no escape!"

  There wasn't, either. The barrels and the automatic weapons ahead could tear the dismayed Confederates to pieces. They'd lost their last race with the enemy. Blackledge set down his automatic rifle and walked into captivity with his hands and his head high.

  If he can do it, so can I, Jorge thought. He laid his weapon on the ground and walked toward the waiting U.S. soldiers. One of them pointed into the town. "Line up by the courthouse," he said, not unkindly. "Some trucks'll take you off to prison camp."

  "All right." Jorge pointed back the way he'd come. "We left wounded in the woods. My buddy's there."

  "We'll get 'em-don't flabble about it. You move along now."

  Dully, Jorge obeyed. The men with whom he'd endured so much tramped through the late-afternoon stillness in the little town of Appomattox-a sign on the courthouse gave him the name of the place-toward the end of the war.

  T hings were quiet outside of Birmingham, and inside, too. Cincinnatus Driver approved of that. After all the shells that had flown back and forth, a truce was holding now. A U.S. officer had gone into Birmingham to confer with C.S. General Patton.

  None of the drivers, of course, knew what the U.S. officer would tell the surrounded general. That didn't stop them from guessing. "If he don't quit, I bet we drop a superbomb on him," Cincinnatus said.

  "Sounds good to me," Hal Williamson said. Several other men nodded. Williamson went on, "All the trouble Patton's caused, we ought to drop a bomb on the fucker anyway."

  More nods, Cincinnatus' among them. "I wonder when he'll come out," the Negro said. The officer, a major,
had gone in not far from their encampment. If he came out the same way, maybe he would tell them what was what. You could hope so, anyway.

  "How long d'you think he'll give Patton?" somebody asked.

  "I wouldn't give him long," Williamson said. "If it's surrender or get one of those bombs in the kisser, what does he need to figure out?"

  Cincinnatus lit a cigarette. Not even tobacco smoke soothed him much. He wanted to know what was going on there inside the battered heart of the Confederate industrial town.

  So did the other drivers. "That Patton's a stubborn bastard," one of them said. "What if he doesn't give in?"

  "His funeral, in that case," Cincinnatus said, and then, "Couldn't happen to a nicer fella… Well, it could happen to Jake Featherston, but I reckon that's comin', too."

  Williamson pointed into the ruin that was Birmingham. "Here comes our guy," he said. "And look! He's got one of those butternut bastards with him."

  Sure enough, two men came out of the city, each of them carrying a large flag of truce. The C.S. officer looked clean and neat despite the disaster that had befallen the place he was defending. He also looked as unhappy as if he were burying his only son. That told Cincinnatus most of what he needed to know.

  "They givin' up, suh?" he called to the U.S. officer, the rising lilt in his voice saying he already had a good notion of the answer.

  All the drivers burst into cheers when the major nodded. "They sure are," he answered, "or it looks that way, anyhow. We've still got a few little things to iron out-that's why Captain Monroe is with me."

  The Confederate started to give the men standing near the big green-gray trucks a polite nod. Then he saw Cincinnatus among them. "You have those damned black terrorists here?" he demanded of the officer in green-gray.

  "I ain't a guerrilla." Cincinnatus spoke for himself. "I don't blame those folks for risin' up-don't get me wrong-but I ain't one of them. I'm a citizen of the USA, and proud of it, too."

  "That's telling him!" Hal Williamson said.

  Captain Monroe looked even more mournful than he had before. The U.S. major, whose name Cincinnatus still didn't know, grinned from ear to ear. "You asked, Captain," he said. "Now you know."

  "It's still wrong," Monroe said stubbornly. "Niggers got no business fighting."

  "You call me nigger again, you ofay asshole, you ain't gonna last to dicker your goddamn surrender," Cincinnatus said. Captain Monroe's jaw dropped all the way to his chest. He couldn't have been more astonished if an Army mule had cussed him out.

  "Somebody doesn't seem to agree with you," the U.S. major observed. "And since he's here, maybe he's got a point, you know?"

  Monroe shook his head. Cincinnatus hadn't expected anything different. Speaking of Army mules…When it came to the Confederates' views of Negroes, they could have given the beasts mulishness lessons.

  As the two officers went back to confer with U.S. higher-ups, Hal Williamson thumped Cincinnatus on the back. "That butternut bastard can't make nasty cracks about you!"

  "He better not," Cincinnatus said. "The guys who can talk are the guys who end up winnin'. You lose, you got to listen to the fellas on the other side doin' the braggin'."

  "That's us!" Two drivers said it at the same time. Cincinnatus nodded.

  After that, with the ceasefire holding, the drivers had nothing to do but sit around and smoke and eat and play cards. Cincinnatus didn't mind, not even a little. Nothing could go wrong while he was in the middle of a big U.S. army. Nobody was likely to shoot at him from ambush. His truck wouldn't hit a mine and explode in flames. And they gave him the same combat bonus for this as they did for driving through bushwhacker country.

  Three hours later, the U.S. major and C.S. Captain Monroe returned, both of them with their white flags. The officer in green-gray was all smiles, while Monroe, his shoulders slumped, his head bowed, showed nothing but gloom.

  "It's all over," the U.S. major said. "They'll come out. One more nail in the coffin, and a big one, too."

  "Did you have to say that?" Monroe barked.

  "I'm sorry, Captain, but will you tell me it's not the truth?" the major asked. The Confederate officer didn't answer, which in itself told everything that needed telling. The major nodded to the group of truck drivers. "We gave them one thing: Patton gets to address his men after they lay down their arms."

  "Why not?" Cincinnatus said. "Talk is cheap." His pals laughed. The U.S. major didn't, but mostly, Cincinnatus judged, to keep from offending his C.S. counterpart. As for Captain Monroe, his glare said Cincinnatus belonged in a camp even if he was a U.S. citizen. Cincinnatus scowled back, remembering how close he'd come to ending up in one. How many other Negroes from Covington's barbed-wire-enclosed colored district were still alive? Any? He just didn't know.

  The two officers went back into Birmingham. Cincinnatus listened to shouts, some of them amplified, inside the city. Spreading the word, he judged. After another hour or so, Confederate soldiers started coming out. They weren't carrying weapons, and they held their hands above their heads. A few had bits of white rag tied to sticks. They were skinny, and their uniforms had seen a lot of wear, but, like Captain Monroe, they all looked surprisingly well bathed and well groomed. Patton was supposed to be a stickler for stuff like that.

  They weren't shy about scrounging ration tins from anybody in green-gray they saw. "Thanks, pal," one of them said when Cincinnatus tossed him a can. Then the man did a double take at his dark skin. He looked at the can. "Yeah, thanks," he repeated, and went on.

  "Wow," Hal Williamson said. "This place made half the shit they threw at us, seems like. And now it's out of business." He mimed swiping the back of his hand over his forehead in relief.

  "So where do we drop the superbomb we were gonna put here?" another driver asked.

  "New Orleans. Gotta be New Orleans." The answer came to Cincinnatus as soon as he heard the question. "Satchmo won't like it, but too bad for him."

  "No offense, Cincinnatus, but I don't much care for the music he plays," Hal said.

  Cincinnatus shrugged. "Well, I can see that, 'cause it ain't what you're used to. Me, I grew up in the CSA, so it sounds right to me. And he's damn good at what he does, whether you like it or not."

  "So is Jake Featherston," Williamson said, which was true but not exactly a compliment. Cincinnatus thought about rising to it and arguing for real, but why? When a whole Confederate army was surrendering, what point to a dumb little quarrel?

  More and more soldiers in butternut and Freedom Party Guards in camouflage uniforms trudged out of Birmingham. The Party guards looked even sorrier about giving up than the Army men did. Had they seen any chance to fight on, they would have grabbed it. But they didn't-even they knew the jig was up.

  Hall nudged Cincinnatus. "Look! That's Patton! That has to be Patton."

  "Sure does," Cincinnatus said. Nobody else would have worn a chromed helmet with wreathed stars picked out in gold. Nobody else would have worn not one but two fancy six-shooters, either. Patton's look of loathing made everything from the other soldiers and the Freedom Party Guards seem downright benign by comparison.

  Patton already had U.S. soldiers walking along watching him as if he were a lion in a zoo-a dangerous beast that couldn't hurt anybody any more. Cincinnatus and the rest of the drivers fell in with them.

  The Confederate soldiers-now the Confederate POWs-stood in rough ranks in a battered, cratered field. U.S. troops, many armed with captured automatic weapons, guarded them. More U.S. soldiers rubbernecked like Cincinnatus. Engineers had set up a microphone in front of the prisoners. The U.S. commander was a long-faced, bald brigadier general named Ironhewer; he waited by the mike for Patton's approach.

  Patton saluted him with immense dignity. General Ironhewer returned the military courtesy. Patton took off his pistols and handed them, still holstered, to Ironhewer. This time, the U.S. general saluted him first. He gave the ceremonial weapons to an aide, then went up to the microphone.

  "Men o
f the Army of Kentucky," he said in Midwestern accents, "General Patton has asked leave to speak to you one last time. As this battle ends, as peace between our two countries draws near, I did not see how I could refuse him this privilege." He nodded to the C.S. commander. "General Patton."

  Ironhewer stepped away from the microphone and Patton took his place. "Thank you, General, for the courtesy you have shown me and the kindness you are showing my men," he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. He needed a moment to gather himself before continuing. "Soldiers, by an agreement between General Ironhewer and me, the troops of the Army of Kentucky have surrendered. That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and we cannot hope to resist the bomb that hangs over our head like the sword of Damocles. Richmond is fallen. The cause for which you have so long and manfully struggled, and for which you have braved dangers and made so many sacrifices, is today hopeless.

  "Reason dictates and humanity demands that no more blood be shed here. It is your sad duty, and mine, to lay down our arms and to aid in restoring peace. As your commander, I sincerely hope that every officer and soldier will carry out in good faith all the terms of the surrender.

  "War such as you have passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. But in captivity and when you return home a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect even of your enemies." Patton paused. He brushed a hand to his eyes, then went on. "In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. I have never sent you where I was unwilling to go myself, nor would I now advise you to a course I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers. Preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and, I hope, will be magnanimous."

  Still very erect, he saluted his men. Some of them cried out his name. Others let loose with what they still called the Rebel yell. Tears now streaming down his face, Patton waited for the tumult to die down a little. Then he stepped into the ragged ranks of the rest of the POWs.