Twig

by wildbow

  “Not that we’ve won,” the captain said, in a conspiratorial tone, not meant for all of the soldiers. “The Crown doesn’t lose wars. When it looks like things are going that way, they force a draw.”

  The gas was dissipating. The enemy soldiers were still standing, still seemingly alive, gathering their strength.

  “I saw this a few years ago. Something like it,” the captain said. “This may be where things get harder.”

  “Harder?”

  “That gas, it’s plague. Parasites, maybe, or a communicable poison. Win or lose, if those brown-skinned S-O-Bs go back home to their families, they’ll be killing them.”

  A shell went off, a beast flinched, moving its head to one side. The damage seemed remarkably minor, all things considered.

  “They have nothing to lose,” Mauer said.

  “Exactly right, soldier.”

  The enemy was regaining its strength. More shells were going off. Even from this distance away, shouts could be heard. One command, echoed by squadrons of other men.

  The beasts were so large that almost every shell hit. Every shell hurt, even if the sheer mass of the monsters was so great that it was like taking buckets out of a lake.

  One particularly well placed shot hit an injured area. The spray of blood that followed was phenomenal, albeit short-lived, blowing a small injury out into a larger one.

  A command came from far down the trench. Like the enemy had done, captains echoed it.

  Mauer stared at his captain, waiting.

  Thirty feet away, the next squadron’s captain picked up the cry.

  “Going over! Target the installations!”

  Mauer’s captain drew in a breath, then repeated the warning. “Going over! Target the installations!”

  Destroy the artillery to save the beasts.

  “Stitched first!” the captain ordered. “Use them for cover. Do not fall behind, or you’ll stick out!”

  There was so much fear and uncertainty in the trench, now. Murmurs of catching that plague, of being shot.

  Mauer had heard once that, given a typical arrangement of soldiers, even in a life or death situation, one in twenty would not act to hurt another human being.

  The thought almost warmed the chill that had settled deep in his chest, fear and anger and frustration bottled deep within. Intrinsic human kindness.

  “Make sure your rifles are loaded and ready,” the captain was saying.

  The reminder helped, but the men needed help in another department altogether. Mauer knew it.

  The captain had woken Mauer up to something gradual that had been occurring over days and weeks. The gradual, quiet slide toward being a man that was already dead.

  He couldn’t go back that way.

  The only way was forward.

  He would be forever grateful that he’d been given that small awakening. Even if his forever only lasted a few minutes more.

  More shells went off, all directed at the great plague-beasts. Pants-shitters, as the others called them. Mauer had never liked the vile language.

  He preferred words that had more power. He bent his head.

  Bowing his head, he spoke. “I pray to you, Lord God, for protection. You do what is right, so come to our rescue. Listen to our prayers, and keep us safe from harm. Be our mighty rock, the place where we can always run to for shelter. Save us, by your command.

  He continued, “You have made us suffer greatly, but you bring us back from this deep, muddy pit. You give us new life, you make us truly great, and we will strive to take sorrow away.”

  When he looked up, he realized many were watching. The stitched with the innocent’s eye stared, its mouth moving to echo his words.

  He couldn’t be sure why that disquieted him so much.

  When he looked at the captain, the man wore a serious expression. Expressions without words or tone were harder to understand, but he wasn’t blind.

  The man gave him a nod.

  “Go!” came the cry, from the far end of the trench. It was immediately picked up, an echo in different voices.

  “Go!” Mauer’s captain cried out. “Over the top! Stitched first!”

  The stitched went over. Where the rumbling and shells had weakened trench walls, some broke down a little with the weight of the dead bodies.

  Mauer watched his stitched go over, urged by the handler, who stayed behind. It wasn’t expected to return, or to need another order.

  “Go! Right after them! If you wait, you die!” the captain bellowed.

  Mauer went. He watched the stitched he’d felt such a profound, dangerous connection to. He followed it, gun in both of his hands, and was joined by the other soldiers. The dry ground was just steep enough to make running faster, without making him stumble.

  Where he’d been so cold before, there was only a wild, mad fear, and an anger directed more toward them than to the enemy.

  “Clear the trench, press through to the installation!” the captain bellowed the word.

  Each step Mauer took was a step away from being a dead man, in the most ironic of ways. There was a passion to his movement, and ideas of what he might do if he survived all this danced through his mind.

  With a dispassionate expression, he watched the stitched with the innocent’s eye die. A child or a young woman had gone into its making, he knew. He’d felt a connection to the thing, and he wasn’t sure what that connection was, as if there was something he was supposed to put together.

  Three men died by his hand, and their faces didn’t even stick in his mind. One rifle shot, two stabs with the bayonet.

  Another two were injured, cut across their faces, though those faces were already crawling with things the Academies had created. Parasites and leeches. The orange fog had housed other things. Things that hurt and debilitated. The enemy was slow to put up a fight, feeble, but not lacking in conviction in the slightest. An odd combination.

  What Mauer might have been, if he hadn’t been woken up.

  He didn’t hold back, couldn’t, out of fear that he might never be able to summon up this mad courage again.

  He made his way across the enemy trench, saw nobody capable of standing or holding a weapon. With shaking hands, he pulled himself up and over the other side, to move toward the artillery installation, reloading the moment he had his two feet on solid ground.

  The men at the artillery installation had to have known what was evident enough to Mauer and the other members of the squad. It had been a one-sided slaughter.

  There was no reason, then, for the artillery squad to hold back. The cannon lowered, aiming front and center.

  Mauer raised his rifle, aimed, and shot in the moment. He watched a man die.

  The man who manned the artillery cannon, however, survived to pull the trigger, firing toward the front of Mauer’s squad.

  Mauer felt his arm go, like a scrap of cloth caught by a strong wind. Blind and nearly deaf, bowels empty, he dropped. It was only when he lay there, yearning for unconsciousness, that he felt the burning across what remained of his skin.

  He thought of the stitched, and now wondered if it had been real, or if it had been something meant only for him. A sign.

  He screamed, not because of fear or pain or hopelessness, but because he couldn’t bear to let the flame go out, and a scream of rage and defiance was all he had left to give.

  ☙

  Mauer raised the hand the Academy had given him. Rain streamed into and over crevices and cracks. Here and there, muscles twitched, agony lancing through veins, nerves, and around the openings where the fungus—and it was all fungus, despite appearances—broke through the flesh. He likened the experience to having a red-hot needle pulled through his arm every few seconds,

  “How’s the pain?” his captain asked.

  “It never stops,” Mauer said. He blew the whistle, managing the location of the Academy’s beast.

  “Maybe when we’re done, it might feel better,” the captain said.

  Mauer knew
the man’s name, of course. Edwin Gibson, a friend and confidant, but the man would remain his captain in many ways. It was a way of holding on to the fire, keeping from slipping into that dead place. Remembering that day, almost more vivid and clear than real life could be.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be done,” Mauer admitted.

  “You chose the right enemy for an endless war,” the captain said.

  “I chose?” Mauer asked.

  “Poor wording on my part. I’m more a man of action than a man of words. A fighting man.”

  “Mm hmm,” Mauer said. He smiled. “I’ve missed you, Ed. It’s been a lonely year without your company.”

  “I could have visited.”

  Mauer shook his head. “Not worth the risk that others might come to conclusions or start asking questions.”

  “I know. Not that it mattered.”

  “Unfortunately not. The Academy is changing. We might have to act sooner than later if we’re going to avoid being left behind.”

  “Okay. We’ve waited too much as is.”

  Mauer smiled.

  When a few seconds passed, he ventured, “I’ve been reminiscent, lately. Do you remember that day?”

  “I do.” There was no question as to which day it was.

  “Was it a good day, or a bad one, do you think?”

  The captain smiled a bit. “Ever with the tough questions.”

  Not an answer unto itself, but perhaps the only answer he’d give. Mauer was fine with that.

  Neither of them were thinking of the last day they fought. That had effectively been the last day of the war. The Crown had given up on the war weeks earlier, the motivation for which was a question of resources. It had been too costly to keep going with Academy productions spread so thin and no thunderstorms for their stitched soldiers. Not the loss of good men and boys. Resources.

  Mauer and his fellow soldiers hadn’t been much different from the stitched in that regard.

  No, the day they were thinking about had been the day that Mauer had limped out of the hospital with his new arm, the fire burning fiercer than ever, but with no outlet. Even in fixing him, the Academy had taken their pound of flesh. The arm was one more experiment. They would fix it or replace it as the need arose, he’d been promised.

  He preferred the pain. Better that than to give them more data and help their work. The pain drove him forward, reminded him to keep moving, to focus his talents and focus his mind to figure out all the possibilities.

  Even with that, he hadn’t anticipated the children.

  He would know better in the future.

  God doesn’t back their side, Mauer thought. When he’d met up with his squadron for what was meant to be one last visit before they went separate ways, those were the words he’d uttered. A call to arms and an excuse for his own prayer’s failure, back before they’d gone over and charged across the empty space.

  He’d said a lot more, after that. They had listened. They had talked, all of them, well into the late hours.

  They had planned.

  Those plans were supposed to have come together tonight and tomorrow. He could rally the people to stand against the Academy and see it for what it truly was, and let them fail. Failure could breed other sentiments, if he was careful.

  The Academy’s experiment reacted, jumping back, just barely avoiding crashing into one of the soldiers at the vanguard.

  A man, far too large, thick skinned, misshapen and fat, lurked on a nearby building.

  Gorger. Mauer and his men had done his research. Moles inside the academy had provided the critical details.

  Mauer felt the heat within him burning quiet and clean. Less a raging flame, and more a white hot steel. He raised his hand to lift the whistle up to his lips and held them tight.

  Tell the Academy anything, but don’t tell them about the whistle, he’d told the boy.

  He’d given other instructions to others within the Academy. Some he hadn’t yet had a chance to make use of.

  Whistle in place, he grabbed his rifle and tossed it straight up, caught it so his hand was low and in place, and put his thumb through the ring he’d had installed to work the bolt. He shifted his grip again, raising his Academy-given arm to steady the end of the rifle.

  Gorger moved off to one side. Too fast for something of his bulk.

  But Mauer had anticipated the movement. Gorger had once been human. He thought and operated like a human. He followed the same rules.

  The rifle moved in line with Gorger’s movement. Mauer fired.

  He watched Gorger drop.

  That white hot fire and the pain that kept him up nights had forced him to focus. When he couldn’t sleep at night, he walked to the outskirts of the city and practiced shooting. Always with his rifle.

  Gorger wasn’t so different from those great plague-beasts he’d seen on the last day of the war. Thick skin, but they made the eyes small for a reason. For Gorger, the real eyes were hidden, masked off to the sides.

  Gorger staggered, one hand to his cheekbone. A bottle of liquid fire splashed against his chest, and the contents sloshed out, flowing off his skin like water off a duck’s back. He wasn’t even singed.

  Mauer blew. The number of short, sharp whistles indicated direction. The spiny beast lunged, sweeping past Gorger. Anything else might have been sliced, but Gorger wasn’t touched.

  “Aim for the eye! Right cheek!” the captain shouted.

  Gorger charged. Mauer redirected the beast, putting it in the monster’s way. It was lower to the ground, better braced, while Gorger was incredibly strong. Gorger could deal with the beast, but he couldn’t shield his other eye in the process. He tried another tactic, turning sideways, running with his shoulder forward, driving the monster out of his way and continuing forward.

  The squad parted, one soldier a step too slow in getting out of the way. Jean Dupuy, Mauer knew, who’d hurt his leg in the same explosion that had taken Mauer’s arm and flesh. Dupuy died, or he was hurt badly enough that only the Academy could put him back together.

  Mauer whistled, two sharp sounds.

  Gorger turned, reorienting, looking to see where things were, using his one remaining eye.

  The spiny beast attacked him, raking his face and chest. From his reaction, the beast had come close. He nearly stepped on Dupuy as he wrestled with the beast.

  The captain’s turn to whistle, now.

  It was an odd reflection, in a way, of that day in the war. Except Mauer and his men were on the other side, now.

  Gorger saw the small, dark objects land in a scattered pile around him. The beast that Mauer had been given sensed the objects while they were still in the air, and it was fast to retreat.

  No less than a dozen grenades went off in quick succession.

  This wouldn’t be it. It wasn’t enough to kill Gorger. It was enough to stall it, get them a block or two away. They’d have another chance to blind, other weaknesses to capitalize on. There would be more obstacles tonight, before they got to safety.

  But Mauer wasn’t concerned.

  The battles he fought, be they against Gorger, children, or the Academy itself, weren’t battles he was supposed to win.

  But he’d seen his death, a dead man walking with an innocent’s eye. He’d outlived it, surpassed it. If anything was missing, now that it was gone, he’d replaced it with a steadily burning rage of the quietest, most patient sort.

  There was little obstacle he couldn’t surpass, when he had conquered death. He knew it, his comrades knew it. Others would soon know it.

  He had faith in that.

  Previous Next

  Lips Sealed 3.1

  The room flooded with light. I opened my eyes just enough to glimpse Gordon sanding there, curtains in hand. He was wearing a white Academy uniform, minus the jacket. He took his time, tying each curtain back with the ribbons that were hooked into the wall. Past the rain-streaked window, the trees and the leafy branches on buildings were a breadth of colors; mostl
y red and red-black for the buildings. The color green was all but gone from the view.

  I pulled the covers over my head.

  “Up,” he said, tearing the covers off me in one sweep. “Mary can’t wake you up every day, much as you’d like her to.”

  “But I don’t want to go to school!” I groaned, pulling the pillow over my head.

  “Orders.”

  “I don’t care about orders! I’m the black sheep of the lambs, the rebel, the villain! I can play hooky!”

  “You’re coming,” he said. “I’ll drag you along in your pyjamas if I have to.”

  “I’d make it work,” I mumbled into my pillow.

  “I’m betting you’d revel in it. But you’d stand out, and we’re already on shaky ground there.”

  I moved the pillow and looked at him, “You’d sabotage the project? Reveal us for what we are?”

  He looked very casual, leaning on the footboard at the end of Jamie’s empty, neatly-made bed. He didn’t flinch at the question, but instead asked, “Aren’t you already doing that, trying to skip out on this job? Professor Briggs said he’d make use of us. He followed through on his word. This is our assignment.”

  “I didn’t think he meant this!” I said. “It’s so horribly, awfully, agonizingly boring!”

  “It has to end soon.”

  “Nuh uh!” I said, flipping over and sitting up a bit. “We finish and, oh, guess what? We have to start over! He’s sinking the project and he’s trying to keep a leash on us. This pointless busywork is exactly that.”

  “I wouldn’t say pointless,” he said. “If you’re not going to get up because of the project, how about getting up because you don’t want to look like a baby in front of Mary?”

  “Baby?”

  “I can play head games too, Sy. If you want to whine and throw a tantrum—”

  “First of all, that’s not a good head game, if I know you’re playing me.”

  “It’ll work,” he said.

  “Second of all, I’m not throwing tantrums, you dick.”

  “You’re not acting like an adult, either.”

  “Yeah? Are you sure? Because I think a lot of adults groan and moan behind closed doors.”