Battle for the Wastelands

by Matthew W Quinn

  Clark frowned. Hoisted on his own petard.

  “Very well. A trade. In exchange for Terry and McDougal, I’ll —”

  “I will leave that to you and Alexander.” His main concern was that his lieutenants’ territorial disputes were peacefully resolved. If they wanted to horse-trade for a couple of towns, that did not bother him.

  He rose from his seat. “This meeting is adjourned.”

  Grendel and Alexander stood beneath the Nicor, the Obsidian Guard a discreet distance away. “You see,” Grendel said. “That was not so painful.”

  Alexander nodded. Clark left soon after Grendel passed judgment. Alexander was not interested in making deals, and Grendel figured Clark could tell when he was not wanted.

  “True,” Alexander conceded. “Perhaps taking a day to travel here means I won’t have to spend years fighting a war.”

  “That is the plan. And if war does come, it will not start on your land.”

  Alexander nodded. “I’ll keep a closer eye on Mifshud. Being a light hand is good for business, but not when it pisses off the neighbors.”

  Grendel could understand those wanting to escape Clark’s dominion. However, his entire regime from his palace in Norridge to the lowest soldier of the lowest commander rested on the those who worked or built providing for the military. Alex and most of his commanders ran ships so efficient they could let those under their thumb move around and still collect the taxes, but Clark could not say the same. If Hamari were as poor as Mifshud claimed, it would not shelter runaways much longer.

  One more grievance for the people the Merrills once ruled. One more reason to rise up when my son comes.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jessamine and her bodyguard leaving the citadel. She briefly paused to speak with a dark-skinned Nahada woman.

  It looked like Jessamine had made a new friend. If they started corresponding, this gave Grendel a source of information on what went on at Hamari Fort, independent of Alexander or Mifshud. It never hurt to have fingers in many pies.

  The Army Life

  Zeke led Andrew through rows of tents to where the Second Pendleton gathered. Andrew was shocked at how small the outfit was. He thought regiments had one thousand men, but this one had barely two hundred. Although they still called it a regiment, nobody had bothered replacing the dead colonel. The last surviving major was in charge, with two captains below him. Zeke’s squad and a couple others served under one Lieutenant Jack Hardy, who wasn’t there. Wyatt, however, was. Shit. The corporal’s expression darkened when he saw Andrew.

  “Add Sutter here to my squad,” Zeke ordered.

  Wyatt nodded. “Yes, sergeant.” He wrote on a notepad and fixed an eye on Andrew. “Let’s hope you work out. Stay out of my way.”

  Andrew was just in time for the tail end of morning chores, done after breakfast and before drill. That day Zeke’s squad was touching up the trenches along the camp’s northwestern edge.

  Luckily, most of the work had been done when he got there. Andrew spotted David scooping dirt into a wheelbarrow held by a red-haired young man he didn’t know.

  “So you’re the new guy?” the redhead said. “Come here’n take the damned wheelbarrow.”

  Andrew didn’t like the other fellow’s tone. “Why?”

  The redhead glared. “Take the damn wheelbarrow, greenhorn.”

  Andrew gritted his teeth at “greenhorn.” He’d fought the Flesh-Eaters and even Grendel’s men and survived. Could the other fellow say the same?

  He looked at the redhead. He could lick him. However, that wouldn’t look good, getting into a fight on his first day. “All right.” He came over and took the wheelbarrow from the redhead. “What’s your name?”

  “Will Simmons. Yours?”

  “Andrew Sutter.”

  Will shrugged. “Nice to meet you.”

  Andrew forced himself to smile. “You too.”

  Will pointed to some boards forming a crude ramp. “Take the dirt up there. Hank’s working on the berm.”

  Andrew frowned. Why had Will said Hank’s name so scornfully?

  The wheelbarrow pulled at his hands, the rocky soil heavier than ordinary dirt. Andrew bent down and forced the wheelbarrow up the tracks left by previous trips. Above he found a dark-haired young man touching up the elongated heap of rocky earth dividing the bare ground of the camp from the sea of grass outside. He looked heavier than the rest.

  “You Hank?”

  “Yeah. Hank Evans. You must be the new guy.”

  He set his shovel down and shook Andrew’s hand. There was something odd about how he held his upper lip when he spoke, but he seemed friendly enough. Greetings done, Andrew pushed the wheelbarrow over to the berm. There Hank scraped out the dirt with the shovel.

  “Get me some more dirt. The berm’s getting a bit eroded.”

  Andrew made three more sweaty trips between the trench and the berm before Zeke was satisfied. Zeke next ordered the squad to an open space for drilling. Andrew received a bayonet to fit into the new lug attached to his rifle.

  “All right,” Zeke ordered. “We start off with bayonet drill. My squad, line up here.”

  Behind Zeke, another sergeant shouted at his troopers, lining them up in front of Andrew and the others. The men did not line up directly. They instead spaced themselves out, every man facing an empty spot. The ones who had been soldiers for awhile stood with their legs spread apart and upper bodies bent forward like prizefighters. David imperfectly imitated their stance. Andrew did likewise.

  The sergeants walked the lines of their men. When Zeke reached Andrew, he stopped. “Feet wider.” His arm leaped forward, striking Andrew on the shoulder. Andrew stumbled backward. Somewhere, Will laughed. Andrew turned red. “Keep your feet shoulder-width and you won’t be easy to knock down.”

  Zeke soon returned to the center. “First off is stabbing. Lunge forward, like you want to stick that knife in some Flesh-Eater. Then we’ll switch to rifle butt. Begin.”

  With a shout, the more experienced men surged forward, thrusting their bayonets. Andrew followed a beat later, with David a beat after that. On the second lunge, everyone kept up. The stabbing drill lasted for twenty minutes, leaving Andrew’s upper arms, shoulders, and even his hips burning with pain. His arms, already sore from hauling dirt, trembled slightly. Zeke showed no signs of releasing them. Instead he ordered them to practice striking with the rifle butt.

  To distract himself from the pain, Andrew imagined his blows cracking open Flesh-Eater heads or crushing Flesh-Eater throats. The rifle felt lighter. He struck his next mock blow with much more enthusiasm.

  “Stop!” Zeke called out after several minutes. “Time for water. Next is squad-level drill for closing with the enemy.”

  After the soldiers drank from their canteens, Zeke and the other sergeants lined up the squads. “All right,” Zeke began. “Some of you already know how to fight as a team, but we’ve picked up a couple of greenhorns. You’re good individually, but sometimes we’ll go in-close with the Flesh-Eaters rather than just shooting and running. Then you’ll need to fight as a squad. Sound off!”

  “One!” the soldier on the far left shouted.

  “Two!” Hank shouted.

  “One!” Will shouted.

  “Two!” David shouted.

  It was Andrew’s turn. “One!” Good. He wouldn’t be paired off with Will.

  “Odd numbers, you’ll start with the rifle. Even numbers, you’ll start with the bayonet.”

  The other squads were already moving. Andrew stood on his tip-toes to watch. Around half of each squad stood and pointed their rifle as if they were firing while the other half got down on one knee and thrust with their bayonet. The men with the rifle would lower their weapons and switch positions, only they’d be somewhat forward of the ones who knelt before.

  “Begin!” Zeke shouted, interrupting Andrew’s pondering.

  The squad spent twenty minutes on the new drill. Will, Hank, and Owen already knew it. A
ndrew picked up on it soon enough. David, however, fell a single movement behind toward the end.

  “Stop!” Zeke ordered. “Court, front and center. The rest of you, dismissed for lunch.”

  Lunch consisted of two pieces of a thick bread called “hardtack,” eaten sitting on an empty patch of stony earth near the canvas mess tent. When Andrew first bit into one, his teeth stopped abruptly.

  “Ah!”

  Will snickered.

  “Not a good idea to eat hardtack straight,” said Owen Gollmar. “Put some water on it, let it soak in.”

  Andrew looked at Owen. The other soldier had ruddy skin like a pikey, which put Andrew on edge, but lacked the traders’ substantial nose. And he didn’t smell. Andrew decided he’d be polite, but keep an eye out lest the other man try to swindle him. “Thanks.”

  He poured a bit of water from his canteen onto the hardtack and let it work its way in. He took another bite, more carefully this time. The hardtack still resisted, but he gnawed a piece off. It was bland and took awhile to chew and swallow, but he ultimately managed to defeat it.

  Andrew had barely finished when David skulked in. “What’d he want with you?”

  David scowled. “More drill. I missed one movement, just one, and —”

  “The better-drilled a man is, the better he is in a real fight,” Will interrupted. “Zeke’ll drill you extra because you damn well need it. We’ll make damn sure you learn it, or else he’ll make us all do extra drill. Got it?”

  David glared at Will. “Who made you —”

  “Will’s right,” Owen interrupted. “Fighting as individuals works fine for taking pot shots at the bastards, but if we tried that in a line battle, we’d be their lunch. And one man can be the weak link of a whole squad.”

  Andrew remembered the men of Carroll Town spilling down the hill, the Flesh-Eaters at their heels. Maybe someone hadn’t been quick enough and the Flesh-Eater he could have killed got through, or someone ran and the others followed. Will was an asshole, but he seemed to know his business.

  “Yeah,” Hank added. “A weak line’ll crumble and then it’s time for killing.”

  “Of course he knows,” Will sneered. “He’s done it before.”

  The spirit returned to David’s face. “Hobble your lip, Will. He didn’t have a choice.”

  Will leaned forward. “Everyone’s got a choice, if anything between living and dying.”

  Andrew’s gut clenched. Hank had been a Flesh-Eater! That business with his lip must’ve been to hide the filed teeth!

  Andrew looked at Hank. The other man had been pleasant –unlike Will – but he had also supped upon human flesh and helped stomp on the faces of good folk. As far as Andrew knew, Will hadn’t committed those particular sins.

  Before Andrew could open his mouth, Zeke cleared his throat. Everyone fell silent as he walked among them, glaring at each. “We got enough fighting outside the camp. I won’t have fighting in it.” His voice rose. “All of you, give me twenty gaspers, now!”

  After the gaspers — an unholy mix of squatting, push-ups, and jumping — were done, Zeke gestured for them to follow him. “It’s time for target practice and then long patrol.”

  The second part got Andrew’s attention. “Patrol?”

  “After target practice. Move along.”

  Zeke led them to a range at the camp’s edge. A line of dummies wearing the red-and-black of the Flesh-Eaters and occasionally the black of the Obsidian Guard stood several hundred yards away. Wyatt appeared with a basket full of ammunition boxes, handing one to each soldier.

  Andrew weighed his box in his hand. “That’s not a lot of ammunition. How —”

  “We don’t have a lot of ammunition,” Wyatt spat. “Bullets are best spent on fighting, not training.” Scorn etched his face. “Let’s hope you can hit the right targets this time.”

  Andrew looked at the dummies. He sniffed. He’d hit them easily. After all, he’d been in a real fight before.

  Then the dummies started moving up and down and from side to side on their stakes. Andrew nearly jumped. What the hell? Soon he spotted the ropes trailing from the dummies. That reminded him of when some pikeys had once put on a puppet show in Carroll Town when he was four. Right clever. Moving targets were harder to hit.

  “All right,” Zeke shouted. “Shoot these sons of bitches!”

  Andrew quickly emptied his rifle. The dummies proved more difficult to hit than he thought. He missed twice.

  He frowned. In a real fight, the dummies would be firing back. He’d escaped the destruction of Carroll Town with just flesh wounds, but his luck wouldn’t hold up forever.

  Zeke stepped forward and inspected the targets. Then he nodded toward Will and Owen. “Perfect accuracy.” Owen simply smiled, but Will smirked at Andrew. Andrew scowled back. He’d have to learn the redhead a lesson in manners.

  Zeke walked up the line, talking to Hank and David. Then his gaze fell on Andrew. He leaned forward, his face in Andrew’s. “All the times you aimed for the center of the target you hit. The two times you missed, it looked like you were aiming for the head. Always aim for the center of the target. What the hell were you thinking?” Andrew reddened. His mouth worked. Zeke raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “I’ve always been good at hitting the center of the target…”

  His voice trailed away. Training was a poor time for experimenting. He was being stump-stupid and he knew it.

  Zeke sighed. “Sutter, don’t be a fucking idiot.” He pointed at the ground. “Twenty push-ups, now!”

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  Zeke waited while Andrew did the push-ups. Dust mixed with sharp-smelling gunpowder dirtied his hands and chest. When Andrew dragged himself to his feet, Zeke addressed the whole squad. “Long patrol’s to the green hills and back. Follow me.”

  As the squad followed their sergeant, Andrew leaned over to Owen. He didn’t want to rely on a pikey, but he was the closest one and he’d been there longer. “What’re the green hills?”

  “They’re out east where the grass thins out and the desert creeps north. Ground’s queer, too slippery for horses. We’ll ride up, look around, and head home.”

  The men mounted up and rode through swiftly-drying land for what felt like hours until they reached a cluster of hills coated with green glass. Andrew’s eyes widened. A lightning strike in the desert could turn sand to glass, but the hills had to have been struck hundreds of times. Andrew swallowed. He wouldn’t have wanted to be there for that storm.

  “Dismount,” Zeke ordered. “Hobble your horses. Court, watch them.” The soldiers dismounted and tied their horses to a trio of pickets Zeke hammered into the ground. “All right,” he said when everybody was finished. “We’re going to circle round and look for enemies. It’ll most likely be Flesh-Eaters, but scuttlebutt is Grendel himself was here.” A scowl crossed his wide face. “There might be Obsidian Guard. We are not to engage unless we’re spotted. Got it?”

  “Yes, sergeant,” the soldiers chorused. The tramp of their feet echoed the march of the Carroll Town militia in Andrew’s mind. His grip on his rifle tightened. Would he have to face the Flesh-Eaters again?

  For good or ill, there were no enemies. Sliding on the ripples in the strange green glass was the only danger. After circling and probing the hills and finding nothing, Zeke had them remount for the long ride back to camp.

  Soon after they returned, Wyatt summoned them to their company’s mess tent. The smell of hot potatoes struck Andrew in the face. His mouth brimmed with saliva. His mouth grew even wetter when he saw jerky served alongside the potatoes. It had been months since he’d eaten meat he didn’t have to kill himself.

  “This’ll be the last meat for awhile, boys,” the frog-faced cook said as he doled it out. “Hope you like it.”

  Andrew gobbled down the jerky. Part of him wanted to savor it, but most of him was too damn hungry. Most of the squad did the same. Finishing off the potatoes took longer, but not by much.


  David chewed his jerky thoughtfully. “Good meat. A bit chewy, but that’s jerky for you. Could stand to have a bit more sugar, but —”

  “We haven’t got a lot of sugar,” Will interrupted. “We haven’t got a lot of anything. Now shut the hell up.”

  “Will,” Owen rumbled.

  David scowled but did what Will told him.

  Once the meals were eaten and the cleaning done, Andrew turned to David. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  David furrowed his brow. “Go where?” He paused. “You’re not skedaddling, are you?”

  Andrew frowned. The Merrills saved his life. He wouldn’t abandon them. Sticking around would keep him alive and give him more chances to kill Flesh-Eaters.

  “I want to look round, see if I can find Sarah or Cassie. It won’t be long ‘til it starts getting dark.” He’d learned night fires were almost forbidden — dirigibles – and he didn’t want to stumble around in the dark.

  David nodded. Andrew set off, David behind him. They hadn’t gotten far when Hank turned up. “You need help with anything?” This time he didn’t bother hiding his teeth.

  Andrew looked at him without speaking. Hank had been a Flesh-Eater. Who knows what loathsome habits he’d picked up? Did he really want someone like him near Sarah or Cassie?

  But Jacob Burns had been conscripted and run away. As David said earlier, Hank hadn’t had a choice. It wouldn’t be fair to hate him for it. He’d keep an eye on him though, just in case.

  “We’re looking for my sister and my girl.”

  Hank nodded. “What they look like?”

  “Sarah looks a lot like me, considering we’re twins. Hair like mine but longer, green eyes, and a bit shorter’n me.”

  “Got it. And your girl?”

  “Cassie’s got brown eyes. Blond hair. She wore a blue dress last time I saw her.”

  Andrew didn’t mention she’d been hurt before the Flesh-Eaters invaded Carroll Town.