by Mark Tufo
We’d lost at least seven men and women on this side. I had to think the numbers were similar on the other sides. In one fell swoop, we may have just lost close to twenty percent of our fighting force. It was the opening salvo of a war, and we’d been dealt a devastating blow.
“How can this be?” Bailey asked, looking at the wounded and dead being tended to by the townsfolk who were rushing to their aid. “We’re going to lose.”
“They’ve been thinking up an offensive strategy for a while, Bailey. The diplomatic ruse was probably just so they could get a good, final look at our battlements and make sure you hadn’t changed anything.”
“What do we do now that they haven’t already got a counter for?”
“You and your men stay low, but cover me. If anyone from that snowplow blade pops their head up, I want you to shoot them.”
“What are you going to do?”
I had already grabbed a couple of magazines and jumped down the ten-foot wall. I was thankful the earth on the outside was soft and absorbed the brunt of the shock to my knees.
Bailey knew better than to loudly cuss out my actions and give away my element of surprise, but I still heard her call me an idiot right before she told her men to cover me. I don’t know if one of the men was precognizant or heard something (I wonder what death sounds like), because he popped the top of his head over the lip of the plow blade. His eyes grew wide as he saw me rapidly approaching.
“Shit.” I still had a good ten yards to go. If they all stood and fired, I was as good as a human pincushion. Two more stood up to see and were immediately met with a hail of bullets, which sent them scurrying back down. I silently thanked Bailey. I was swinging out wide to the right of the barricade, about five yards or so. The men hiding behind it caught sight of me just as I came up to their side. I was firing as soon as I had more than a horizontal angle to them. Their bodies danced like palsy-suffering puppeteers were manipulating them, as I gave them extreme lead poisoning. Three arrows were shot my way, one of which was now neatly protruding from my thigh. The pain had yet to catch up with my nerve center as adrenaline pushed it to the side, but that was only going to be a temporary respite. By the time I’d emptied the first magazine, twelve of the thirty men were dead…or at least soon would be. Another five or six were wounded enough that they would not be a factor in this fight.
That left more than enough to deal with me. I truly hadn’t been expecting those kinds of numbers. I depressed the magazine release button, as men were scrambling to notch arrows or pull back on drawstrings. I already had my hand on the replacement mag before the spent one clattered off a rock below me. Arrows notched, strings were being pulled back and bows subsequently rising. I slammed the magazine home and hit the bolt release button. If the chambered round needed a tap of the forward assist, it was going to be all over for me. More arrows were coming my way, and I’d been hit again. I was reflexively firing from the hip a la Rambo, and not because I thought it was cool or would be demoralizing to the enemy, but because I didn’t have enough time to bring it up to my shoulder. And, oh yeah, the fact that I had an arrow protruding from my shoulder probably had something to do with it as well.
I was screaming in pain and rage as I fired (and maybe even in a little bit of animalistic savagery) as I approached, destroying those poor souls before me. The 5.56 caliber round made short work of those still living. I could sense that more than a few still had a beating heart, and right now, if I wanted to survive the severing of a major artery in my torso, I was going to need all the help I could get. I descended on the damned with all the fury of a wraith. My screams were intermingled with theirs as I drove my body down with enough force to push the arrow through my back. The men’s screams quieted quickly enough as I drained the remaining life out of them. I was in so much pain; I nearly chewed through the neck of the man I was blooding.
I heard bullets whining over the top of me. At first, I mistakenly assumed that the Talboton defenders still thought that I needed help. Well, I did, just not from where I was thinking. Men were coming out of the woods, attempting to get a shot at me as I was in a relatively exposed and vulnerable position. Blood pulsed into my elongated teeth as I deeply pulled in the fluid. The crossbow bolts were getting particularly close, and there were no more of the living near me. I could not afford to take another strike.
The muscles in my thighs were cramping up around the arrow I had yet to deal with. I stood with a fair modicum of success. I ran, well dragged, as fast as my damaged leg would allow, which wasn’t half-bad. But then again, I was main-lining adrenaline and blood, so I had a fair amount of energy. Within a few steps, I thankfully found myself on the other side of the steel away from the piercing barbs.
“Are you alright?” Bailey screamed at me.
I must have looked the sight. My right leg was soaked in blood as was my chest and most of my face. I wiped away my offenses as best I could while I also waved to her to let her know I’d make it at least until the next minute. A few more bullets zipped overhead before the opposing side realized that covering a two hundred and fifty yard open expanse against bullets was not necessarily a good idea. The arrow in my leg was to the outside of my bone, but not by much. The head was sunk in a few inches, so this was also going to require me to push it through as opposed to pulling it. I was in essence going to have to create more internal damage before I could begin to heal. Not an appealing prospect.
“I’m fine, but I could go for a little whiskey right now!” I yelled back to her.
It really wasn’t worth the effort. All I did was aggravate the injury to my chest region and it wasn’t even funny, plus I hate whiskey. I let out an involuntary yell, well, more like a manly grunting, as I pushed the arrow through. No, hold on, okay, it was more like a screaming. For whatever reason, it hurt more than the other arrow, maybe because that other one was almost all the way through before I drove it out. I was breathing heavy, and blackness was encroaching on the periphery of my vision as I began to feel the outline of the arrow head pushing the muscle and skin out on the back of my leg. It was not a sensation I would recommend. Sweat was pouring from my head, stinging as it dripped into my eyes, making it impossible to keep them open. I would have spared the time to wipe away the offending fluid, but I was afraid I wouldn’t have the courage to continue what I was currently doing.
Just when I thought the pain could not get any more intense, the arrow came free and proved just how wrong I was. I lost a few seconds in the all-encompassing haze of hurt. Nothing else could even begin to matter as the pain ravaged across the synapses within my brain. I don’t want to say I became one with the pain like some Zen bullshit, I’m just saying, if breathing and circulating blood weren’t automated processes I would have forgotten to do them.
“Michael?” a voice rang out; crystalline, considering the circumstances. It was Azile, and when I could do more than pant like a rabid dog trying to slake an unquenchable thirst, I sent her a half-hearted wave. My head was still slung forward, my chin nearly touching my chest.
“Can you come back?” she asked.
It was a few more seconds before I had the strength or, more like the desire, to respond. Plus, I wanted to make sure I didn’t screech out an answer like a thirteen-year-old boy in the midst of his hormonal transition.
“Not yet.” I don’t think I said it much louder than a conversational tone, and the majority of that was directed at my lap where my head was pointing, but Azile heard it. I was going to have to learn some magic, seemed like a useful tool.
I heard approaching footsteps. I was convinced it was the enemy, and was sort of hoping they’d just put an arrow in my brain bucket and I could move on. When I felt hands wrap around and under my arms I figured it to be Talbotons.
“That was pretty stupid, Michael,” Bailey said as she half dragged, half carried me back to the wall.
“So much for dignity.” My left leg was dragging uselessly behind me. Another soldier had taken up position on my r
ight and was assisting Bailey. Two more were covering our tactical withdrawal, which sounds so much better than retreat.
“You’re going to hate this then,” Bailey said as she wrapped a makeshift rope harness under my arms. “UP!” she shouted. The pain was excruciating, even with her and the other man bearing most of the weight.
Hands reached down and pulled me over. I was back to the dog panting level of hurt. I would have been better off with the obliterating threshold as Azile got down to look me in the face. It would have given me a reason to ignore her question.
“Are you in such a rush?” she asked. I saw the brimming of a tear in the corner of her eye.
It hadn’t dawned on me at first what she was talking about. “Oh…suicide? No, not me. Just helping out the only way I know how. Can you do anything for the pain?”
“I could,” she stood. “But I won’t. Maybe next time you’ll think before you try to kill yourself.” She walked away.
“I’m sorry, Azile.” A mouse, farting underwater, would have been louder.
“You should be,” she answered, never turning back to look at me.
Bailey came up over the lip of the wall. “How’d that go?”
“About as well as you might expect.”
“Come on; let’s have someone look at your injuries.”
I was going to tough it out and then decided I didn’t want to. At the bare minimum, I was going to take a few glasses of liquid painkillers before I came back up.
“What about the battle going on?”
“We’re in a holding pattern right now. Everyone heard the commotion you had going on. Plus the ones who saw it will have pause to reconsider their actions.”
“Still think we’re going to lose?” I asked as she helped me down the stairs.
“BT was right about you,” was her answer.
“You know that can mean so many different things. Right?”
“I know.”
“I love women and their banal responses.”
I was in the, for lack of a better term, or a true term at all, doctor’s office. Although, calling the guy that brewed the beer a doctor was like calling the guy that invented Twinkies a dietician.
“You don’t look too bad.” He was poking and prodding at the hole in my back that was trying its best to close up, no thanks to him.
“Where’s Mathieu?” I asked Bailey after I asked for, and actually got, a sudsy drink.
Now that I wasn’t in the heat of battle I didn’t want to have to think of the men I had just sent along their new journey. Men who, had they been asked, probably didn’t want to fight. I don’t think it is in the genome of the average man to fight in a full-scale conflict. Again, that is something that is reserved for those obsessed with power and the accumulating of it.
“He is tending to the wounded. He has proved to be a valuable field doctor,” Mullen, the bartender, answered for Bailey.
“Anyone would be accomplished next to you,” I told him.
“I’ll take the beer away.”
“Did I ever tell you how brilliant I thought you were?”
He scoffed.
“You might want to think about cleaning those hands before you go jabbing my thigh,” I told him.
“I’m not going to lie and say I understand what’s happening in your body, but I wouldn’t doubt that within the next hour you even remember being shot.” He was bending over, trying to get a better look at the exit wound in my leg.
“Oh, I’ll remember,” I assured him. Just like I would the faces of those men I’d just shot, they would all be indelibly etched into the folds of a mind that could never forget; the looks of terror or anger plastered on their faces as they looked down the barrel of their demise. I was halfway through my third mug of beer when the shouts of alarm started anew. Bailey was out the door like a rocket. I was slow to get up and even slower to shuffle.
“Should you really be going out?” Mullen asked.
“No, now help me.”
He came over and braced me up, which was not easy considering I did not have a good side to brace. I’d been shot in the left shoulder and the left leg. He could not get under my right side because it hurt to put the pressure on my left leg and he could not put pressure under my left arm for obvious reasons. He ended up getting behind me and placing his hands on my hips.
“I hope this isn’t as weird for you as it is for me,” I told him.
“It is.”
“Thank you,” I told him when we got back outside.
“You good?”
“I am as long as this wall stays here.” I was leaning up against it.
“Call me if you need me to come help you again. I’ve got to go back and tend to a few people.”
“Thank you.” We both stopped to look at a burgeoning fire that had found its way to one of the shops. Hardware, I think. People were rushing towards it with pails of water. Odds that they were going to be able to put out a burning wood building with a bucket brigade were not good. The opposition had decided to up the ante by sending in fire-laden bolts. It was this time’s version of a nuclear bomb—it could be that crippling to a town manufactured mostly from trees.
“That’s not good,” Mullen noted before heading back in.
“Not good at all,” I echoed. I noticed that men were coming down off the walls to assist in the fire quenching duties. “Bailey!” I got the shout out I was looking for, but unfortunately it felt like someone had dragged fifty grit sandpaper along the lining of my throat. “Bailey!” I somehow notched it up a few more decibels.
I’d got her attention. “Get your fucking men back on the wall!”
She looked at me, not understanding, but when I pointed to the makeshift firefighters, she got it. Before the order could be executed, blood-curdling screams intermingled with cries of surprise and lastly came the sounds of shots being fired. Yeah, we had guns, but these people weren’t really soldiers. When the fire started, half of them had left their post to aid in putting out the danger. Of the half that remained behind, most had turned to watch what was happening. The enemy had taken advantage of this lapse in judgment by coming closer and firing arrows and bolts, killing more of our defenders. There was no way I could attain an accurate count, but anything was grievous when you were already less than a force of two hundred. By the time our army figured out what was going on, the damage had been done. We’d repelled them this time but at some serious cost. The dressing on my leg was soaked through with blood by the time I got to Bailey on the wall.
“Bailey, you spread the orders to your people that the next one to leave his post not on a stretcher has to answer to me.”
I thought for a second we might be headed for a pissing contest, and we both knew who was going to win that particular challenge; luckily, she deferred. I placed my back against the wall and, as gingerly as I could, I slid down so I was sitting with my back to the enemy. My leg was throbbing much worse than my shoulder, which only felt like it was being set on fire and a hot poker shoved in it.
“We lost another seventeen,” Bailey informed me when all the stations reported back in.
“Round up a militia,” I told her as I wrapped my hands around my thigh in a desperate bid to squeeze out the pain.
“A what?”
“Get some townsfolk, give them a gun, show them the basics, and get them up on this fucking wall.”
“They’re not trained. They won’t know what to do.”
“Fuck, Bailey, from what I’ve seen, none of these people know what to do.”
I might as well have just hit her with an uppercut to a fully exposed jaw. Her eyes grew wide from my insult. I don’t think I would have been all that surprised if she grabbed me by the ankles, got some torque going and tossed me off that ledge. Oh, I’m sure there were all sorts of things going through her mind, and she wanted to unleash them like hungry hounds to a steak.
With more dignity than I could have been able to muster, she swallowed down that big, bitter bile and
nodded. It was curt and her lips were pursed but she did as I said. She did not have much room to argue, and as much as she might like to, as is the nature of almost every female that walked the planet, she would bide her time. Us in-fighting only jeopardized her people even more, and that was something she could not stomach.
Surprisingly, of the three fires that had been started, two had successfully been put out before too much damage could be recorded. The third, a storage shed of some sort, had been the sole casualty. I closed my eyes. It appeared the coalition against us was going to take a little time before they made their next move. My short-clipped dreams for the most part revolved around things happening to my leg or shoulder. At one point, I think a skimobile pulling a surfing Nicole behind it had run over my leg. In another, Tommy and I had been playing racquetball, and he’d hit the ball so hard that it had lodged into my shoulder. I remember even asking him if that counted as a point.
When I startled awake, I realized it was sometime early in the morning—around three a.m. if I had to take a guess. Azile was standing next to me, looking over the battlefield, her long hair and red cape billowing out in the breeze behind her. Every once in a while, the wind was so brisk as to cause her garment to make a cracking sound.
“I see you’re awake.”
I don’t know how the hell she saw that I was awake. She wasn’t looking at me and her hood was up shielding the side of her face and subsequently, her eyes from me. The pain in my shoulder was nearly negligible and my leg merely felt like I’d suffered a charley horse.
