50,000 words -- "Eternus Bellum" Part 1

"We have the upper hand," she said matter-of-factly. She had said as much half a dozen times in the span of half an hour. The other two didn't bother to comment.

"Come on," she urged, "we have more men. We can take them." You could hear her frustration; her patience with the others seeming inability to make a decision long past metaphorical midnight. There were nine of them hunkered down in the hole and only six of them; six assholes trying to get away from yesterday's rather successful sortie-- though not so successful in that they were stuck down in the town's square behind a dead and mangled tractor.

Deacon turned away from his view of the square. "What makes you so sure?" he asked, with just a touch of impatience all his own crept in.

She raised her hand and ticked off a finger... "There's only six of them, and they've been hunkered down behind that wreck for near the whole day." She ticked another finger. "They're out of ammo, or they're holding on to what little they have left." Another finger. "They've got no reinforcements coming." ...another... " and, Mason wants us to wait."

"Then we should wait," Malice replied from across the hole. Deacon turned back to his view of the square and echoed Malice, "we should wait."

"Wait for Mason 'cause he wants the medal? Or wait for Mason 'cause you're too chicken shit to step out?" She said, hushed and scornful. "Which is it Deacon?"

Deacon sighed. Not the long heavy kind, but the short impatient variety. "Those assholes took out a mess with more'n three-hundred soldiers... armed soldiers. And they did it with under ten men. Those assholes may or may not be out of ammo and, frankly, I'm not trading my ass on slab for a worthless medal should those six assholes prove just as crack cornered as they were yesterday at ten."

He looked away from the crumpled tractor and studied her for a moment. "You can go get your ass handed to you if you want. I won't stop you; frankly, I'm tired of you. But if you get it handed to you, and we lose the field... If you get out alive, Mason will kick your ass across seven hells of white-hot fury. And when he does, Hanna, don’t come bitchin' at me. Don't come bitchin' at any of us. Better yet, don’t come back. 'Cause if you’re stupid enough to go it alone, you’re stupid enough, sooner or later, to get the rest of us killed." Deacon turned his focus back to the wreck in the square and the occasional peep of helmet over its jagged summit.

"Glory isn't something any soldier should court, Hanna," said Jeckle. "Glory's for songs and regaling the past. Men live in the present. Time enough to live in the past when you’re dead." Jeckle was a scarecrow of a man, wiry and tough as sinew. He looked gaunt and half dead already, and only his eyes gave anyone reason to believe him still among the living. They assumed a constant fever glow; a spark of something hot, something either insane or dangerous. Or both.


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ELAshley
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