Just a bit for Temps II

they recover the bodies

A lonely cricket was the only sound they could hear as they moved like ghosts through the trees, over a ground torn and still reeking of cordite.  No Zom moved or could be heard anywhere.  It was like the earth had just swallowed them all up.

Guns was out front, point man for the whole goddamned army again, he thought, and he kept the safety on his M-36, carrying it in his left hand and his knife ready in his right.  No noise was the watchword - and if any Zom or Fem was dumb enough to be around now - they were shish kebab!

His night sight was working just fine with the small amount of light remaining, and he picked his way with certainty back long the path they’d taken in their withdrawal earlier…. though not along the trodden path.. just in case..no way!  Through the scrub on the side of it….

About fifty yards to go, and aw, f**k!

Some idiot in the lines put up a parachute flare, and the glaring bright phosporous light made every f*****g shadow black as pitch and every lit place white as a neon ghost….. and everything moved with the sway of the flare as it drifted down like so many blocks of solid darkness leaping at them.

Gun froze and hoped everyone else did, too.  Let the flare make all the movement, don’t make any that is out of synch with its sway!  Wait…. wait…….wait………

Finally it died out and the light vanished, leaving Guns with multiple after-flashes on his eyes.

“S**t”, he thought, “just what I f*****g need.  Some f*****g FNG shivering in a trench way back shooting up a flare to lighten things up.. and f**k it up for everyone else!”

He waited until his sight came back online, and then started off again, only about forty yards to go……and stopped in mid-stride.  Someone, or something, had moved right where he figured Grappler’s Hole was…. Slowly he extended his right hand out in a wide open flat palm gesture and moved it downwards several times, hoping they could see and go to ground.  With the slowness of frozen treacle he slipped to the ground himself, and waited, looking intently off to the side of where he’d spotted the movement and moving his eyes back and forth without moving his head - just to retain night sight…..

Jess came up, quiet as a ghost, and without speaking, Guns pointed out where he’d seen movement….. then gestured for her to guard his back.   Then he slipped off his M-36 and placed it gently on the ground where Jess could grab it if she needed to bug out in a  hurry, and crawled off into the night, nearly vanishing from sight after a few yards…

The Zom was tired.  Not true Zombies as some thought, they were mere human beings and got tired as much as anyone else, and hurt as much, too.  The difference was they lacked some level of control over their basic nature like animals, and when confronted with any seriously emotive or primitive situation, they tended to lose it and go off the rails….useful sometimes in a straight-up fight, but useless many other times when discipline would carry the day, which was why they were caught out by that old .50 cal that afternoon.

This one was tired after a long day and near dozing on his feet….and felt only a brief stab of pain in the kidneys first and then a hand come up to grab him by the mouth as it began to open to shriek, and a knife sharp as an eagle’s eye swept up to bury itself in the right side of his neck and then rip across, tearing out masses of tissue and arteries……..

Guns lowered the profusely bleeding and still kicking corpse to the ground soundlessly, and clicked his fingers twice…. almost a night insect calling……

When Jess arrived, not bothering to look at the corpse at her feet, he signaled with one finger up to say there was only one, then set out again on his night move to the hole where the three troopers had to be lying dead. He had no illusions that they’d be bringing anyone out alive after that dark afternoon…..

*     *     *

Back at the hilltop position, Rowdy watched through his night vision goggles, and  shuddered inwardly at the way Gun Fanatic disposed of that Zom so fast and so ruthlessly.  He made a note to himself - again - that he would never want to be in that situation… too old anyway.   But he thought back to the day when he’d first seen Temple at the recruiting ground, and then the way she was in the fight that afternoon,  and was still amazed at how easily the young ones had slipped into that sort of barbarity.  And now they would be risking all this and doing all this to bring in three dead guys.  Damn - this war was getting old…

He glanced over to the reserve machine gun team of Neo and Hobgoblin, both men and ready to fight…. Yep - they sure were.   Now what was going on down there….

*     *     *

The team spread out around the hole, and set up security, Wyett, Guns, Poweranni and  Phantom Wolf taking the four corners, while the other six spread in an inner circle, eyes wary and ears wide, wide open.  Out on the perimeter, Phantom Wolf closed her eyes tight, and used her ears……nothing….

Faced with the reality now, Temple could feel herself hesitating, and jumped as Jess put a hand on her shoulder, indicating that she’d go down into the hole first. Temple nodded and found herself only half willing to see, as Jess slipped silently over the lip and disappeared into the ground as if swallowed up by the Gates of Hell.… then Temps shook her head and went forward to see what Jess would find, feeling her heart falling to her boots as she did…… hopeless, helpless, helpless….. like that old Neil Young song…

The Colonel’s words from Omaha came back into her head as they had picked Blaise up off the bloodied sand, repeating over and over again.. get it over, Troop.. get it over…. just another road accident.. do what you can and drive on drive on….drive on……… she drove on….

Jess slowly raised her head, and signaled for Mabe and Mabel to come get the first body…  they raised Darin like some Medieval altar scene, tears starting in their eyes, and laid him gently on the cold, cold ground like a destroyed Crusader, not looking at his ruined face…

Then  it was the turn of Surfagirl and Raj… Sarrain was a mess of bloody holes when those two angels took him up to Heaven above ground…. and they laid him alongside Darin, close in death as in life…

Temple’s turn now .. and she took a firm hold on herself and slipped into the hole alongside Jess, who looked suspiciously like she had a tear in her eye as she just stood there and looked down at their fallen Colonel…. Temple felt the same but no tears - no time for that …Jess wiped an eye and they reached, in unspoken unison,  down to his crumpled body ….. which groaned faintly as they put their hands underneath it……

He’s alive, raced through their minds. How?  HOW?

No time for that.  Jess signaled to Surfagirl, the medic Surfagirl, and they made room for her as she in turn slipped into the hole, and reached to the Colonel and shook him gently, drawing another small groan…. Jess spoke for the first time since leaving the trenches,

“Graps! Graps!  Ya gotta be quiet here.  It’s dark and the Zoms are all around.  We’re on our own out here and we’re here to get you.  Where ya hit?”

They heard Grappler draw a long painful breath, and he raised a hand to signal Jess closer, and almost spoke in tears,

“I can’t see, Jess.. I can’t see.  Head.”  His voice trailed off weakly, and he drew another breath, “lef..left leg ….t-tried to stand.. return fire.. fell over.. somewhere in the gut.  Can’t see.. Sarrain…Sa..”.. he lapsed into silence again,

“OK”, Jess whispered, “We’re pulling you out.  Just take it and quietly! Ya with me?”

Grappler nodded weakly, “Hurts!”….

Jess, Temple and Surfagirl quickly patched what they could in the dark by hand, rough but it’d have to do, no morph with a gut and head shot, and lifted him up to the arms of  Mabe and Mabel, who took him gently as possible and laid him out ready to move.

Now was the most dangerous time… six pairs of hands all tied up carrying dead and wounded troopers, and only four on lookout….

They moved out, Wyett and Poweranni taking point, Phantom Wolf and Guns doing drag, the other six, plus three, in the middle…. Jess and Temple had the Colonel, the others the two dead.  Wolf and Guns would lay down their lives if necessary to stop any f*****g Zoms hitting the team, but they weren’t planning for it to come to that… better to make the Zoms dead first….and that was just what they felt like right now…

It was slow, noisy, dangerous work… no hope of absolute quiet, and the going was painful over rough ground broken by fighting, and it took over an hour to cover the nearly two hundred yards back to the foot of the ridge.  As they arrived there and sat down for a breather, the air was suddenly filled with a rapidly increasing rumble, and a series of massive shells came down on the woods they’d left, phosphorus shells fountaining like fireworks and high explosive digging huge craters and hurling trees to the ground….the Navy was here!

Not so urgently now - no Zoms would be coming through that barrage, and you could even hear shrieks as the heavy shells lit ‘em up… they climbed to the top of the ridge where every willing hand was lent to give them help getting in, Rowdy and Inks even coming out to take a load when they were about forty yards out.

As Jess came over the berm, she stopped and looked at Rowdy smiling a huge s****y grin and looking like a kid at Christmas, and gave him a questioning look.  Rowdy waved a hand to a figure crouched down with a radio, earphones on his head…..

“We got us a NOAH!  And he’s laid on some fire support from one of those big battle-wagons!  Just waited until you were in close enough before letting ‘em have it!”

The Naval Observer for Artillery, Silent Saint, gave a small wave back and went on directing fire, whispering into his handset … “Silent Saint, Silent Saint …Armageddon One… lift fifty, right fifty, over”…….
….

Rowdy had also taken the precaution of having Dr Alexia Ringwald, codename Jupiter, ready in place at the trenches, and she quickly looked over Grappler by the light of a night torch, quickly slipped a needle into his arm and started a plasma drip and saw to the medics carrying him off safely on a stretcher, before turning to Rowdy.

“That’s my last plasma.  Not sure when we’ll get more. Damn Supply!  Where’s frigging Hiwatt and Glinda - they went off hours ago!”

“Easy, Jupes”, Rowdy responded, “you can’t blame Boss and Glinda - the whole front’s fucked up for supplies right now.  That’s why we’re pulling back.  What are his chances?”

Alex let out a breath through her teeth,

“Not sure.  He’s lost a lot of blood, and head and abdominal wounds are never good.  The leg is the least of his worries. As for his eyesight, he's got a mighty good dent in his skull, and it might just be shock to the optic nerves - can't see any serious damage there - yet!  Have to wait and see what the surgeons come up with. I’ve organised a chopper from one of those TRACs - they can spare the fuel at the moment, and we’ll get him to one of the hospital TRACs with the others.  Not much I can do here.  Only need one frigging chopper for our wounded, frigging Zoms!”

“Yeah, well we’ve got to get our dead out ,too, by land, it seems.  Can’t leave ‘em for those f*****g Zoms.  I’ll walk you up to the field hospital.”

Temple quickly put in a word,

“Ah, Colonel, can Jess and I come along? Just for Graps, you know.  I’m pretty sure the Zoms aren’t going to be a problem for the rest of the night, not with that Naval firepower raining down.”

“Sure - you guys have earned it.  Great job.  Let’s get up there before Graps flies away on us again!”

*     *     *