by D Krauss
The Reds stood across the water, thousands of them, seemed like millions, and they roared and chanted and shelled and murdered them.
The Blues stood here, desertions increasing, discipline decreasing, individual acts of cruelty substituting for leadership, colonels and generals more interested in personal fortunes and getting away than making a stand, and they were supposed to be the good guys?
Collier snorted. We have failed you, Dad. Right here in Pemberton. Ghost town now, Dad.
Collier peered up the street as he climbed Battalion’s front steps. Lots of soldiers coming and going from left to right, avoiding the top of the hill and a silhouette that invited rifle fire, but all that activity was just surface, a big intrusion. Moldering skeletons draped in every house, rot and rust and rats; a few houses burned down, the Methodist church just short of the hill’s crest half gone, its bricks spilling into the street, the implements long since looted. Post mortem. The Flu had hit this place hard, and Breakout had pretty much finished it off. The Reds were doing their damnedest to destroy what was left. Uncle Art’s house might be intact but it was over on the Red side so he couldn’t go look. Not that he expected to find anything or anyone, just curious. Collier carefully stubbed out the lit end of the cigar and placed it back in his shirt. It was a pretty town once. It was a pretty country once.
One of Jonesy’s guys was on duty and had already moved the M-16 away so Collier could gain the door. He nodded to the private and stepped into the foyer, which had a gigantic set of steps immediately going to the second floor. A corporal peered down at him with a leveled M-16 but raised it when he recognized Collier, gesturing for him to come up. He clomped his way to the corporal, “Hey, Swift.”
“Sarge,” Swift was laconic and bony and given to an off-world stare, but he was an absolute barbarian on the line and Collier always took him on missions. Swift loved missions and there was an eager light in his glance. “We got something?”
Collier shook his head, “No. Is everyone in?”
“Yeah,” Swift, no longer interested, went off-world again.
Collier shrugged and moved past him. Swift lived only for payback. Collier had lived for it, too, in the beginning, but raged and slaughtered a lot of it out. Oh, he still wanted more: get past these goddamn Reds and finish off the ‘Slams,’ but the urgency was winking out. Far too much fighting left before reaching any sense of satisfaction.
He stepped down the very narrow walkway heading to the last door on the left side, keeping a hand on the railing overlooking the gigantic stairs. Bad choice, this house. It was too weirdly built, long stairs and very narrow walkways. Hard to get out if a shell hit, since the walkways let only one person by at a time. You’d have to jump the railing, end up breaking an ankle. Easy to defend, though, one soldier per landing could hold off a coup attempt. Maybe that’s why the Colonel liked it.
Making the hard climb to the third-floor commander’s office discouraged visitors, too. The Colonel definitely liked that.
Collier knocked on the door and someone inside yelled, “Enter.” He turned the handle.
The specialist at the desk scrutinized him, “Sergeant Rashkil.” It wasn’t a question and Collier didn’t like the way he said it.
“Awbrey,” flat response to convey that dislike. “Is the Major in?”
“Did she send for you?”
Note that he didn’t answer the question. Collier felt a slow burn rise in his chest. “No, she did not.”
“Oh, so this is... personal?” A nice little insinuating pause.
Collier shook his head. What did you expect? This was the army and you can’t keep secrets.
But this was the army and he was vet and non-comm and didn’t have to take any crap from some skinny little acne-scarred maggot, either. He leaned both fists on the desk and pushed his face into Awbrey’s nose. “The nature of my visit is none of your concern. Go tell the Major I’m here to see her, or I’ll throw you out of the fucking window.”
Awbrey blinked and made a squeaking noise as he scuttled over to the inner office door. Since Collier had, on a few occasions, thrown insubordinate lunkheads out of windows, it wasn’t an idle threat.
Awbrey knocked then glanced back with some insolence before going inside. Voices were exchanged and then he sidled out. “The Major will see you, but she’s not very happy.”
Well, thanks for that bit of unnecessary news. Awbrey slithered to the desk, his look containing a smirk that invited a breaking of the little creep’s nose. Temper, temper, Coll old boy, one more Article 15 and it’s the stockade.
He marched in, closing the door behind, hit attention and held the salute, “Sergeant Rashkil requests to speak to the Major.”
She frowned at him from the desk, returning the salute. “Did I send for you, Sergeant?” The official voice, filtered with rank and strength and authority but he could hear the silk tones in there, the tenor that made his heart tremble and always laid a warm chill on his spine.
Major Rosa Vasquez de Alemeida Arce. Her name was poetry. Eternal brown eyes stared at him from the light coffee of her skin, liquid and caressing, all their nights together blended into one passionate, powerful image in his mind, far more than just lust and desperation of the chance – a giving, a complete giving. It made him yearn, the rarity of it.
She was elfin and slight, diminutive features and frame easily mistaken for small and last time we checked, Dad, your son was basically a prisoner and the world was a giant concentration camp, but she was true steel and ice, an Aztec warrior who astounded him with her ferocity and brilliance, and who possessed him soul and body. Soul, body, heart, and mind. Everything. He loved her.
“No, ma’am.”
She arched an exquisite eyebrow and her look became guarded, “Well, then?”
He couldn’t blame her. It was odd enough that she called him directly for missions without going through the Captain or L-T, but she was G-2 and her missions were classified and need-to-know so she got away with it. No one noticed when he responded to her summons anymore, and, of course, no one knew about the extra rendezvous they planned after the missions. Practically everybody suspected because their dual absences were often noted, but she was good at subterfuge, so was he, so they had not been caught.
Yet.
But him showing up without summons, that was different, that was really odd and would be noticed. He saw the doubt in her eyes, wondering if he was about to do something truly foolish, declare his love openly, demand they be together, desert, leave this crazy war like they had often pledged in those secluded, dark, after-passion moments, but that both knew would never happen. Unless one of them, he, for instance, had just gone insane.
He smiled slightly at her discomfort and watched a light panic rise in her eyes. Her mouth parted slightly and he knew she was about to ask him if he had, indeed, gone insane, so he held up a hand to calm her, “I just need some time, that’s all.”
She was puzzled, “Time?”
“A few days. Uninterrupted. No more than two.”
She frowned, “Are you asking for leave?”
“No, ma’am, I know I can’t get leave. Just, respite.”
She regarded him. “Am I working you too hard, Sergeant?” There was a hint of devilry in her question and a spark of comedy in her eyes.
He suppressed a smile, “No, ma’am, not hard enough, I think.” She cast a lidded, coquettish look at him and it was all he could do to keep from rushing forward and taking her in his arms, laughing out loud and startling Awbrey, who probably had an ear glued to the keyhole. “That’s not it. There’s something I have to attend to.”
“Explain.”
“May I show you something?” she nodded and he slipped off the backpack, pulled out the safe and extracted Bill’s letter. He gave it to her, “I just received this.”
She took it, frowned, read it. She looked up. “Collier,” she whispered.
Whip-scarred brothers and sisters. She was from New York City and was an act
ual Survivor, the only one of her family – mother, father, three sisters and six cousins, all gone. She had some distant relatives in Texas.
So did Collier, for that matter, but Texas was a million miles away and, last they heard, overrun by Phase Two and Mexico. You made your families now from who you could find, and some of them worked but most didn’t, the pretense eventually succumbing to the stark reality or, more likely, the thousand forms of death. You then became a short-lived bandit or a short-lived soldier, Red, Blue, whatever, substituting a cause for a life and burned with the false passion of it because there simply wasn’t anything else. You slaughtered to express that passion, convince yourself of human commitment.
And, if you were lucky, you had a rare opportunity to meld with a kindred soul, one hurting as much as you but one who complemented your hurt with healing balm and you, too, could heal her, before the thousand ways of death or the ten-thousand ways of separation asserted themselves.
“Rosa,” he breathed.
They held each other’s gaze for a long, long moment, and if it were anywhere else and any other time and Awbrey wasn’t pressed to the door, they would have run to each other and clung and never let go. But they held their separate distances and let the glances serve as an embrace.
“What’s the extra time for?” she asked. Grieving? she didn’t ask and wouldn’t because grief now was a moment or two, not a couple of days.
“This,” he said, holding up the book. She looked, didn’t understand, but saw sufficient need in his eyes.
“All right,” she spoke softly. She gave the letter back and he put everything inside the backpack.
“Just a couple of nights,” he pleaded, “that’s it, then—”
“All right,” she underscored it and there was nothing more to say.
The iron ball swung at his heart and he felt his chest go weak, felt the tonnage of the last several years fall hard and he dropped his shoulders and swayed a bit, eyes swimming, amazed that the sorrow was such a live thing.
He saw it mirrored in her eyes and the way her hand came to her cheek. “I’ll let you read it.” She nodded and her eyes swam, too, for him and for Dad. Relationships were immediate these days.
He saluted and turned and grabbed at the door hard and fast and had the pleasure of seeing Awbrey almost fall over as he hastily stepped toward a cabinet, pretending he was filing something.
“Awbrey!” she barked with her steel voice and Collier chuckled inwardly. She had seen, too. He went out the door as Awbrey, shooting Collier an expression of loathing, shuffled in for a major (no pun intended) ass chewing. Collier grinned at him. Tough shit, corporal. Stop your damned eavesdropping.
He nodded to Swift and trotted down the stairs and out, stopping on the porch overlooking the street. A couple of rare trucks lumbered by, filled with troops heading out of town away from the front. Wonder where they found the gas? Bandages were clearly visible on various arms and heads and legs. Collier didn’t know them and they didn’t wave and neither did he. Line soldiers on five-day rotation. Back to Division at Wrightstown, medical and rest and resupply, and then back here. Each time, different faces.
The Forever War. Collier remembered that book. Dad had given it to him when he was what, twelve or thirteen? He didn’t think much of it, that being his hate-everything phase, especially Dad, not so much Mom, but definitely school, and everything was fucked because he had to do homework and clean up his room and he and Daniel just wanted to be left alone to play computer games day and night.
He shook his head as he watched the last truck disappear from view. How trivial that all seemed now. Dad had tried to warn him – things change, always, and in ways you never consider. Understatement. Daniel was dead. So was Mom and, obviously, you too, Dad. So, come to think of it, was he.
He took the steep hill up the block to the ruins of the church. A jeep pulled out of the side road across the street, driven by a private. Some L-T he didn’t know was in it. Of course. Wasting precious gas being squired around, huh, jackass? Collier pointedly ignored him as the jeep sped by. Move on, boy. Johnny latecomer, son of some Colonel or General or Congressman, commissioned by influence, not battle, the way Rosa and the few good officers were. Here to pick over the bones. As petulant, insolent, and incompetent as the recruits they got now, but add to that a sense of entitlement. Smarmy worthless bastard.
Better, he supposed, than the smarmy murderous bastards actually in charge of the army, the ones throwing them to their deaths solely to exercise some ego burst or make some kind of HQ political point. He wondered if the Reds suffered the same thing. Not bloody likely, given their success. They seemed to be more on mission.
He stepped around a pile of bricks and up a pile of cement and jumped over some rebar onto a little trail cutting through the top of the rubble. Balancing himself, he crouched low and stepped hard over the pile and slid down the other side. Safe. Stand up there too long and you invite sniper fire. He paused a moment to light what was left of the cigar. Good, good, better draw now and he puffed luxuriously. Gonna miss the one he gave Price, but it was well spent. He absently patted the backpack. Definitely got the better end of that deal.
He was up against a waist-high wrought-iron fence and clambered over it, gingerly avoiding the spikes. Gravestones and obelisks marched away from him up a little crest, their even pattern disturbed by broken stones and fallen monuments, the shells doing enough damage here. The stones were moldy green but startling white where broken, and you had a sense of ancient ruins interposed with modern construction, an apartment complex falling down among Stonehenge.
The chiseled names dwindled in the distance, the Forts and Bushes and Haines, all the good South Jersey families. They had lived some kind of traditional life, then fell by some traditional means, illness or accident, attended to by survivors and pastor and flowers, buried then forgotten. Their descendants now rotted in the houses they had passed down, not buried but still forgotten. Collier took a puff. He wondered if they knew.
There were lots of hiding places here and some trick of sound insulated it from outside noise. He and Rosa had already discovered that. No one else seemed to come here and it remained undisturbed except when they cut the air with their muffled cries, trying to hold it down so as not to arouse any curiosity from passersby, hard to do with the passion between them.
Must be some kind of symbolism, he and Rosa restoring life among the dead, but no, no, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t poetry. They were simply two lovers stealing moments before one or the other was stolen by war. Violating the rules about officer/enlisted fraternization made it dangerous but they were just rules and had no moral force, especially with what lay so powerfully between them.
Screw the rules.
He took a deep puff. The only life he saw, the only hope, was the fleeting glint of her eyes by moonlight. The best reason to fight, so they could love. They could war for another twenty years or twenty minutes, he didn’t care as long as, at the end of it, they walked away hand in hand, out of the sound of guns and men. Maybe that was poetry.
He stepped over one fallen stone and picked his way through others, an obstacle course of prone and upright markers until he was in the middle of the cemetery next to a green encrusted tomb, still intact, the lettering long faded so he didn’t know whose it was. The ground here was soft with moss and damp earth and he and Rosa had laid a blanket here many times.
He settled down, dropping the backpack and savoring a long pull on the cigar. He watched the smoke cloud above him, lifting gently into the air and dissipating. He had about an hour right now, then he would have to go back and tend to roll call and assignments and maintenance, then maybe another twenty minutes in the hammock before somebody bothered him about something that would take a few hours, then it would be lights out and he could slip away and come back here for maybe an hour or so undisturbed.
All told, it would take about two days to finish the Shepherd, what with his slow reading and the poor light and the
time he could steal. The major had the two days covered; after that, somebody would get suspicious. But that should do it. That should.
He pulled out the safe and emptied the contents on his lap. He pawed through the jewelry, examining every piece and trying to remember the last time Mom used it. He read Bill’s letter again. Then, he began to read Dad’s.
About the Author
D. Krauss resides in the Shenandoah Valley. He’s been a cotton picker, a sodbuster, a librarian, a surgical orderly, the guy who paints the little white line down the middle of the road, a weatherman, a door-kickin’ shove-gun-in-face lawman, a counterterrorist intel guy, a school-bus driver, and a layabout. He has been married over 45 years to the same woman, and has a wildman bass guitarist for a son.
Website:
http://www.dustyskull.com
Goodreads:
https://bit.ly/3bkPDCm
YouTube: Old Guy Reviews Books
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OTHER BOOKS BY D. KRAUSS
The Frank Vaughn Trilogy
Frank Vaughn, Killed by His Mom
Southern Gothic
Looking for Don
The Partholon Trilogy
Partholon
Tu'An
Col'm
The Ship Trilogy
The Ship to Look for God
The Ship Looking for God
The Ship Finding God
Story Collections
The Moonlight in Genevieve's Eyes
and other Strange Stories
The Last Man in the World Explains All
and other strange tales
