In the dead of night they went up the hill. Forest so deep and tall they couldn’t see any more than five feet up front. Lights were a no-go. This was entirely a sneak-up. Reach the summit and fall down on them from the top of the hill, assuming correct intel. Six of them and maybe three times as many around the battery. In the balance hung New Duluth. The lights that flashed to the horizon were not the auroras.
The Resurrectionist advance was unstoppable. A hoard of rag-clad rifle-toting holy warriors and fifty-cals mounted to rusting pickup trucks was on the verge of total victory. The remnants of Uncle Sam had made them pay for every inch of blood but they had far too much to bleed. Now he knew why their priests had said to be fertile and make children. Now he knew that their camps were not just senseless cruelty.
Bernardoh was on point with sharp eyes. They moved at the rise and fall of his right hand. On the flanks were Molina and Samson, Molina the essence of swiftness and fleet of foot, and Samson a hulking shadow who nonetheless made no sound in the foliage. He was bringing up the rear with the boy, himself looking around and over his shoulder like his head was a turret scanning the tree-tops, and the boy was solemn and quiet, and looked down, and would have fallen behind if not for their constant reminders to keep pace with the rest.
When they were almost all the way up the slope he gave the whistle and Bernadoh brought everyone to a halt. They were at the base of a tall oak tree, whose branches extended above the rest of the canopy. While the rest stood guard with the boy at the base, he set to work scaling it. Bernardoh gave him a boost to the first branch, and from there he swung upwards through layer after layer of leaves and branches that scratched his hands and arms and legs. The breeze started to pick up, swaying the tree and chilling him to the bone. The first snowfall would be maybe a week away. But the Resurrectionists could be at New Duluth in two days. His heart pumped hard inside his chest as he lifted himself up again and again, as he thought about his sister back in the city, his mother, how in two days time they could all be in cattle cages headed back to the City On The Hill in the dead of winter, freezing to death on the way if they were lucky, and how the men too old to fight, the crippled or the feeble, be shot and thrown into ditches and burned in massive piles. The boy had been meant for such a fate, so they said. Even worse, nailed to the cross, for one of their cardinal sins. It was things like that which made the Resurrectionists a plague. How could a child be worthy of crucifixion?
He hoisted himself up onto a thick branch and took out his binoculars. He had a clear view of the valley now. The town was burning. Amidst the smoke and he saw the soldiers scattering around like ants, the minuscule flashes of their muzzles as they traded fire, the whooshes and distant explosions of grenades and hand-rockets, all a distant fireworks show, the smell of the gunsmoke carrying on the wind. With his binoculars he saw closer. The Fourth Mechanized under Colonel McCullen was in the midst of a fighting retreat, which appeared to be more of a rout, as soldiers stumbled under fire onto battered troop carriers, as they put thatch pitch over homes and stores and added to the already glowing blaze, intending to create a blaze large enough between them and the resurrections that could buy them time to get the retreat in order. Large clouds of smoke rolled through the battlefield, making it harder and harder to see anything but the flashes of guns and small explosives. Behind the Ressurectionist vanguard he saw that their advance had slowed to a halt, as their convoys of trucks and horse-drawn wagons backed up for miles on the narrow road going through the town, and beyond on the outskirts, where tens of thousands had concentrated for a final push against Coalition forces, the lights of their fires a million small stars in the night.
They marched up to the edge of the hill, where they stared down a steep ridge descending into a brief clearing in the trees. Bernardoh pointed down the hill. There. Encased in camo tarp and torn brush, was a truck-mounted Aegis Surface-To-Air Missile platform. Perhaps one of the most valued pieces of so-called “holy bounty,” plundered from some depot or motor pool in their great advance eastward. He doubted their ability to work it. But he saw the radar dish at the top of the array spinning, scanning the skies, and he knew that one of its missiles was enough to doom any plans they had for the salvation of New Duluth. Around it stood ten armed men, and surely more in the trees. They would be hard to spot, in the darkness and thick canopy.
He turned to the boy.
How many?
The expression on the boy’s face became confused, and then clear.
Fifteen.
Where?
Ten around the machine.
The others?
He remained silent.
Where are they?
I don’t know.
Molina sighed.
You said there were fifteen, we only see ten around the machine. Where are the others?
I’m trying.
Try harder. We don’t have time for this.
He checked his watch. Twenty minutes for the final all clear. Then birds in the air.
Three are close. I can feel it. They’re tired.
The other two?
Further. Less tired.
He pointed down the ridge. In the trees. Not far.
So three in the trees not far, two who knows where? Molina said.
Seems so. It’s enough to go off. Everybody, move out.
As they descended the ridge the forest swallowed them in its silence. Vision was narrow now, and not far. Every step taken with precision, eyes up for possible movement. Head on a swivel. Seconds separate living and dying. The boy by his side, moving with the same caution and silence they had practiced for years. Born into it, probably. He wore a camo jumpsuit a few sizes too big for him, making him seem like a maintenance worker somehow lost amid shadowy figures in magazine vests and thigh holsters. He gazed at the men around him, rifles at the ready, crouching in the bushes, breathing heavy. For a while it was that way, silent steps in the dark forest as leaves crunched under them and wind made the branches whistle.
Bernardoh held up a hand like a stop sign. Immediately everybody got low, rifles at the ready. In spite of his clumsiness and absentmindedness, the boy moved almost as if he were one of them. Three silhouettes roamed a perimeter at the treeline, rifles slung. They were fairly spread out, enough that getting them all in one go would be difficult. Thomas watched their movements carefully. In what little of their faces he could see, illuminated by the light of the nearby campfire, they were young, restless. Guard duty being a punishment for a failure in discipline, or simply what all new initiates to the Grand Army of The Resurrection are put through. Cannon fodder if not anything else. Conscripts as tribute from the conquered territories, delinquents eager to escape work details, it almost comes into his mind that they are perhaps not about to kill murderous fanatics that have burned their way east, but young fools tempted by glory or forced at gunpoint.
He saw that two of them were walking towards each other, whispering something. When he saw the pack in one of their hands he knew. Officially prohibited in Resurrectionist territories, cigarettes and other so-called vices prevailed in the front lines, where the pilferage was abundant and the scrutiny was lower. The need to smoke a cigarette meant they were either bored or stressed, off guard. He knew the time was now.
He and Molina went for the smokers. Bernardoh would deal with the other one. This kind of fight was a rarity. Of the men he killed, he could say most were from far away. Distance was the king of modern war, if it could still be called such now. Closing, closer, until he can see the hairs on the backs of their necks. Their blades slice the jugular at the same time, and to his right Bernardoh has done the exact same, the three sentries dropping to the ground in pools of their own blood. They creep further along the perimeter, with a cautious eye for those the boy could not locate. He knows it in his gut. This is far from over. The enemy is only nearer.
Movement in the periphery. He ducks and turns to face and everyone else does the same.
Whose there? Jeddiah? Richard? Commander says-
A young, fresh-faced boy, his eyes go wide as he sees his former comrades face-down bleeding out. He unslings his rifle, which is crude and rusting, and looks to the treeline. Hand to his mouth, he thinks the kid’s gonna vomit, how couldn’t he, but no, two fingers in-between his lips and he lets out a screeching whistle before turning tail and sprinting to get his buddies.
Molina lets out a single burst and the kid drops into the brush like a sack. The answer is swift and overwhelming. A hail of gunfire tears into tree bark and hanging branches as they all hug the ground while the bullets whiz just above their heads.
Return fire!
Samson on one knee hoists the machine gun to his shoulder and starts letting off burst after burst, and he can see the Resurrectionists through the treeline, they’re splitting off, one group’s going for a frontal assault, the others are going to try and flank, shit, they’re outnumbered, and they just lost the element of surprise.
We let them push us too far, we’re fucked! Says Molina.
I know, I know. You guys keep them occupied. I’m going for the SAM battery.
He made sure he had his charges with him. They were two bricks heavy in their satchel.
Cover me!
Bernardoh, Molina, and Samson laid it down thick on the approaching Resurrectionists as he ran through the trees. He was moving fast. The branches were tearing at his face and getting in his mouth. He could barely see five feet in front of him. To his sides the gunfire erupted in flashes beneath the darkness of the canopy. Strays whizzed past him, thudding against dirt and spackling against tree trunks, showering him with wooden shards. Voices to his right. Confusion turning to panic. He hits the dirt, tumbling as the methed-up holy warriors shoot barrage after barrage into the trees, in the vicinity of where they think he is. All around him the foliage is breaking and falling. Right above him something is creaking… He leaps out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by a massive branch of an old oak tree. He hears a voice, young and on the verge of cracking. Something moved. Over there! Fan out. Now they were looking for him. Flashlights on, slowly creeping closer. Soon they’d surround him.
He can hear their breathing now. They near and he has his eyes on the closest one. A skinny boy with a pale hairless face and an underslung chin with a big nose that makes him look like a gopher, carrying a rifle in trembling hands. Too panicked to notice as Thomas crouches his way closer, dagger in hand. The boy is mumbling to himself, prayers for our father who art in heaven blessed be thy name for the armor of the lord to be his shield, as Thomas leaps from the brush to strike.
The boy soldier hears the rustling and moves just enough that Thomas misses his throat. His blade goes in-between the rib bones and straight to the lung, and the boy lets out a long, pained wheeze as his trigger finger jerks and lets off a wild spray in the direction of his comrades. There is screaming, chaos, confusion, and return fire as Thomas runs in the opposite direction, back down the slope, towards the battery.
He feels the exhaustion in his lungs. Minutes turn to hours in a firefight. He knows to compartmentalize. To breathe in, breathe out, repeat his mission. Locate the SAM battery and take it out. By take it out, blow it to shit. Give the all-clear. Watch the fireworks. His legs and his lungs are burning. He slows down a little bit. It would not be good to roll an ankle on the slope right now. Intel was fucked. Lightly defended. He laughs. That was Uncle Sam in these times. Remnants of a superpower. World-class technology, remedial thinking.
Oncemore nearing the SAM battery, he saw it was lightly guarded. Two sentries around the control panel, the rest being tied up with his squad. He felt a pang in his chest leaving them like that. But from the looks of it they were still fighting. He could hear the chatter of the machine gun. The confused, panicked chatter of the guards as Bernardoh, Molina, and Samson did the run-and-gun around them like he’d trained them to. He races towards the clearing.
He’s almost there, he can see the control panels, the radar array. There’s no time for stealth anymore. He double-taps the sentries before they even realize he’s there, and the second one falls only just realizing it is too late, rifle falling from the shoulder-sling and clattering on the ground. He races across the clearing, exposed, and when he’s halfway to the battery, he hears it: there he is.
He reaches the battery just in time to avoid being shredded. Bullets ricochet off the side going everywhere. He has his rifle at the ready, and when a pair of them tries to come around to his blindspot he tags one of them, the other retreating as he drags his comrade to safety. It’s been closer than this before. But he has that feeling… that feeling one gets in their stomach when the clock starts running.
Shit! A bullet ricochets off a panel and grazes him in the right shoulder, and his right arm starts to burn with pain. There’s not enough adrenaline in his system to fight it off anymore. As he trades bursts with the holy warriors his whole body aches and his vision blurs. His field of view is shrinking. He knows any moment what’s going to happen, but he can’t move fast enough.
Two silhouettes in his periphery, surely going around to flank. He turns to face them, knowing at this point, he’s probably a few seconds too late, but maybe fortune will smile upon him more than it already has. But when he sees them, their rifles are not pointed towards him. They are in their own mouths, and as they pull the trigger the back of their skulls explode into red mist.
Further in the forest he hears more: Scattered, single gunshots, the thud of bodies hitting the floor. Then, silence.
He stumbled up to his feet, everything burning inside of him. He was breathing long and ragged, trying to stabilize. Remember the objective. With blood running down his arm, he stumbled to the control panel, and in a series of quick motions, the same series which he’d done many times before, he sets the charges to blow, and runs to whatever awaits him in the forest.
The firefight had torn up the hill. Bullets had torn through everything. The trees, the brush, the dirt, all split and shattered and torn in many places. Nothing moved on the ground or in the trees. The only birds were the ones circling far above the battle. Worse was the smell. Shit, piss, and blood mixed with cordite, all coming from the corpses strewn on the ground, many the same as the one’s he’d seen. Slumped over their rifles, a single exit wound through the back of their heads.
A shadow emerges from up the hill. For a moment he thinks the straggler will do him in. But it’s Samson. They look at each other with the same bewilderment.
They had us, Samson said. Was lookin’ tough. Molina all fucked up, Bernardoh and me holdin’ it down best as he could. One moment they’re screamin’ at us, callin’ us heathens and sayin’ to surrender or face the steel of the lord, the next they all decide to blow their brains out.
Where’s the kid?
Samson pointed up to the ridge. He’s a little rattled. Started screamin’ when it kicked off.
As he walked up the ridge, he took the short-wave radio off his waistband and pressed the button on its side. It crackled static as he spoke into it.
Air command, this is Strike Team One, over.
An older voice answered on the other end.
Strike time one this is air command, loud and clear.
SAM battery to the southeast has been neutralized. Valkyrie One and Two are clear to start their run.
Light the valley on fire.
Understood, Strike Team One.
As he put the radio back in the belt clip he heard the SAM battery explode, he saw the flaming pieces and the black smoke go above the canopy.
As he walked the smell in the air was pungent. The corpses of the men he stepped over had emptied their bowels as they’d died. The bitter, acrid gunsmoke wafted through the air. For a long time he’d done it now. Killing men for the promise of a future where no men would have to be killed anymore. These holy warriors… he looked at their faces and could only find scattered beard hairs in-between, their young faces lying pallid and still in the dirt. Some recreation of the trajectory of their brief lives played in his head. A desolate, deprived childhood in some village or slum of the holy communes. The promise of fortune and providence brought on the lips of the preachers. A brief time in some training farm. A ritual, the birth of a warrior. The saying of an oath. The march to war.
He found the boy kneeling over one of the corpses. He saw the boy’s lips moving, whispering something. The boy noticed Thomas’s presence quickly and reeled around, eyes wide, chest heaving.
It’s okay, he said to the boy. Danger’s over for now.
Because of me, the boy said.
What?
I showed them what they feared. I showed them what would be.
You showed them?
That’s why they died.
In the distance two jets loud and fast screamed across the sky. He saw them in the blink of an eye, soaring over the mass of men and machines like comets from far away.
Get down.
Thomas grabbed the boy and pulled him to the dirt, they turned away from the blast and the flash, and he felt the heatwave like the breath of a dragon ripple through the cool autumn air. His wound burned.
When they looked up again, The Grand Army of The Resurrection was in flames. The valley was an inferno turning men to ash, as the chemicals of the bombs fed off the gas and machinery of the vehicles, the fire rising high and foul, becoming a wall. Tens of thousands of men burn alive before his eyes, flailing screaming, melting into puddles of bone and gristle in the grass, unrecognizable. A war ends here. The crusaders of his will brought to an end like cattle in the valley they intended to pass through. Young boys desperate for a chance. Old men in one last battle. Camp followers, prostitutes, all the servants of a marching army brought to an end by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He stared, and the longer he stared the deeper he could see inside, and soon it was not the resurrectionsts burning in the fire, it was the men he’d killed, prairie barons, former Uncle Sam brethren, bit players in the minor cities, and it was the men he’d lost that burned too. The boy stared into the fire with him, with the sort of long gaze he’d seen many times before. Of a fascination with such things. A fascination born of exposure, and only now what he sees is the beauty. And he knows then the boy stopped being a boy some time ago. And now it is he who feels like the boy, as if the valley was all the campfires of his youth, that would burn long into the summer night and be ash in the morning.
Dias Del Fuego 