The dessert is an oven, which only cooks evil.

After growing tired of writing random short stories with no relevance to each other I decided it would be fun to try and establish a sort of cannon that I could add to whenever I wanted. The stories will center around the lives of a man named Wellington a

Bandaged and dizzy from blood loss, Wellington pushed on to the village. Hours ago, his platoon had been marching towards the Bran River where they were to establish camp and dig trenches. The desert was dry and the general idea of a river brought the moral of the troops to an all time high.  As a result, all fifty members had erupted into nostalgic reminiscing of home. Talk of the warmth of a lover and mother’s secret chicken soup recipe polluted the dessert air.  Sir Henry Carter did not speak a word. He was marching on the rear with Wellington who had been listening intently to the conversing of his fellow troops until he noticed the lieutenant’s state. Carters silence brought no surprise to Wellington; it was something else on the man’s face, which bothered him. Wellington had only been with Carter and his men for a month but thanks to other experience, he was capable of recognizing the look of a worried leader. There is little point in asking questions, which have apparent and obvious answers and so Wellington refrained from inquiring of what ailed the lieutenant.

The geographies in which the war took place contributed to almost as much death as the enemy, the desert being no exception. Wellington had been reluctant to join Carters patrol for this reason. Before conscriptions, he had briefly lived in the area and knew of the terrible things a man might experience when confronted with an open landscape of pure heat. The sun cooked both skin and mind making madness a more acceptable trait then sanity. Carter and his men were tough as cement though. They had been up and down the rougher parts of the war and the majority of them sustained not so much as a scratch.  They had been at Horns Bridge when the mountain fell, in the Quarter Abbey when Jeffery’s Bells first rang, and the lot of them took up the front line at Hoffenberg during Michal Marlow’s reign of steel. Wellington, on the other hand, being a man of tactic and thought, did most of his fighting in smaller units.  He specialized in reconnaissance of the secretive sort; if the queen needed information that seemed out of arms length, he would simply reach out and grab it. He felt a bit out of place in the context of Carters rough brigade but the higher ups had declared his presence necessary for the operation. Carter and his men needed a guide and interpreter and Wellington, having once lived near by, fit the bill.   

Two months the outfit had been in the desert and the entire time without any confrontation what so ever. Not far from their marching grounds lay the small village of Liluput. However, for reason unknown, the crown military converted the town into some form of storage facility. In recent times the enemy, threw some manner of espionage, learned of the village’s importance thus creating a potential security breach. Carter and his men were to patrol the dessert for anything that might prove a threat to the facility and dispose of their findings in the most efficient means possible. The job was mundane and there seemed no conceivable reason for the queens toughest to walk back and forth for two months. The reason did come though. Radar picked them up three days ago and recon confirmed that they were heading for Liliput. Carter’s boys would intercept them at the Bran River, not far from the village, and give them three shakes of hell. That was the plan anyway.

 Not far from Bran, a dim glow of blue coated in rising smoke rose up in the distance.  As the patrol grew closer, it became more apparent that some kind of struggle had taken place. There was definite burning and the air began to smell thick of fresh kill. Carter and his men moved closer to find the sand littered with carnage. The bodies were uncountable; most of them were burned, maimed and fused together into fleshy messes of what were once men. The charred pile was surrounded by a glowing blue aurora that was slowly fading to invisible.

 “Not once during the days of my fighting have I seen such a reckless display of disrespect.” Spoke the lieutenant in the silence of his fellows. “There should be no operant in the world lacking this much restraint. Whoever did this has clearly gone war mad. These are the kind of poachers that threaten the crown and this is exactly why this war is worth fighting.”

Pointing to a red symbol on the shoulder of a body, one of the men corrected the lieutenant, “But sir, why would the enemy murder and mutilate their own?”

Carter pushed the man aside and moved closer to the body. Snuffing the flames with his boot, he sat down beside the poor fellow and began to examine the corpse. After a quick look, the gruff lieutenant stood up and walked over to another carcass. He flipped it over and repeat the process several times, checking at least ten of the bodies for the symbol of their enemy. The lieutenant spoke with something that was never present in his voice, uncertainty, “This makes absolutely no sense. We are the only group stationed out here besides the guards in Liluput and they hardly have the numbers for such an assault.”

Silence fell over the dessert but then Wellington interrupted, “Pushing on to Liluput seems the most logical space of action now, does it not? What are we to do with the bodies?”

“We could burry what’s left of their remains but I fear that would be a hindrance. At this moment, it is imperative for us to report to Liluput, let the vultures do their work.” Spoke the lieutenant. The platoon left the dead pile behind and marched forward.

It was another hour or so before the town was in sight. The closer they got, the less the desert was desert. Random trees and spots of vegetation sprouted up, not enough to call forest but the sight was pleasing to the eye nonetheless. The stink of the bodies was still in the mind of the solders and most of them had not quite recovered from the exposure to so much death in one place. The lieutenant, Wellington and the rest of the brigade had not spoken a word since they chose to push on to Liluput. Not one person went out of their way to remark on the changing landscape, this left the air quiet save a very faint breeze. The town rose up in the distance and soon the group was close enough to make out all the little details that made it different from other towns. The buildings were made of faded stone and there were small groupings of military tents scattered throughout the open streets.  Poor excuses for gardens sat by the smaller buildings while the larger ones all seemed to grow tall with near by trees. The buildings had either hay and mud or colorful stucco roofing for protection against the rain that never came. The town also seemed oddly desolate; there were no guards at the front gates and no sign of any real inhabitants. Next, the platoon would have proceeded to locate the communications tent and the man in charge of the outpost but this plan was cut short by the screaming of one of Carters men.

Wellington turned to the shrieking to see exactly what was distressing the solder but before he could catch a view of what had happened the screaming faded to murmur and the man fell over in a haze of blue flame. To the left side of the group another outfit seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. They were dressed in similar uniforms to Carter and his men and bared the symbols of the crown on their jackets. There were roughly twenty of them, far smaller then Carters group but there was something different about them then any other officer Carter or Wellington had ever seen; neither could quite discern what it was though. The one that appeared to be their commander had his weapon drawn, a long clean blade, and was pointing directly at Lieutenant Carter. The man then proceeded to shout something to his solders whom then each drew gun and began to fire.

Ten or so of Carters men went down quickly in a spray of bullets and blood. The rest had time to draw their weapons and return fire. The lieutenant himself was shouting and firing franticly in fear, no one had ever seen him like this. Wellington, at the rear, had begun rushing around to the front in hope that he might be able to disable a few of his attackers. A sharp pain pierced his right arm and he dropped his pistol. The attackers had closed in on Carters platoon and standing right before Wellington was one of the adverse solders. The man was clearly about to fire on Wellington again and so with quick thinking he tackled the solder on to the ground with his full body. Using the weight of his bad arm to hold the man down, Wellington franticly threw his fist at the helpless solders face. The poor man’s nose broke and he began to choke and spit up blood and chunks of red. Taking advantage of his opponents choking, Wellington quickly rolled over to grab his dropped pistol and fired a single well-placed shot into the man’s forehead. Clothing damp with warm blood, Wellington pulled himself up to see how the rest of the group was doing. It appeared almost half of Carters men were either dead or too hurt to continue fighting. Carter himself was up in the thick of the fighting, clearly mortally wounded the man was pushing on to take as many of his adversaries as possible. The fight was at a loss and the queen’s best seemed to be facing death. In a hope that the village might have reinforcements or some form of help, Wellington decided to make a run for the town he had once lived in. The attention of all solders was only on killing and so Wellington, with not so much as a distraction, was able to sneak away. 

 

…

 

The town was dead, most of the buildings were fine but the bodies of solders and innocent villagers littered the streets. Wellington continued to run, even if there was no hope of help there was still one building he needed to check, a place he used to know well. As he grew closer to the house he was looking for, it became more and more apparent that the military had taken apart the village. Many of the bodies had their arms bound and clearly had been executed; there were odd spots where struggle probably took place. For the most part though, the attack appeared to have been quick and clean.

The house Wellington was running towards was larger then the other ones, all the windows were broken and the dead solders covered the lawn. The front door had been broken down and Wellington rushed inside. The inside of the building was just as bloody as the rest of the town. If a struggle did take place, this building was the center of it. Wellington pushed on through the mess until he reached the stairs leading to the basement of the house. There was no sign of violence on the stairs and the basement room itself was completely clean. Beakers and Chalkboards inscribed with strange formulas and numbers with hundreds of digits filled the space, this room was clearly a laboratory or research hub of some form. At the back was a closed door with a faint aurora of blue glowing out from under it. Wellington stopped moving as soon as he spied the room, he was breathing heavy from the run and his arm wound; he needed rest badly. Then he heard a sound that all at once brought fear, horror and relief to his mind. A baby was crying in the room across from him.

“My god, you really did it, didn’t you.” Wellington whispered to himself.

He walked over to the room and turned the unlocked knob to the door. Inside there was a crib and lying on it was a small child surrounded by a blue glow. Wellington gazed at the child for what seemed like hours then he stepped over to the crib and picked him up. Rocking him in his arms Wellington spoke aloud again, “There there boy, everything’s quite alright now.”

Author's Note

I am a fairly young writer and I am looking for any sort of critical feed back that can help fuel practice. Opinions on sentence structure, active voice, dialogue or anything else you think I need to work on are all appreciated. Be critical, I am very serious about getting better!

Reviews

[Nicole]

Wow that was long....

But, it was VERY good. Keep up the good work!