Brave Volunteers

    Robots? No, they couldn't be. General Rokellin wouldn't cheat like that. He had told me, had promised me that they were normal people. Just like you and me. Normal people who had volunteered so bravely to fight in this World War III. When I saw them for the first time though, they didn't act like normal people at all. They acted stiff and...unearthly somehow.
    I'm Corporal Jenkins, an 18-year-old American boy who grew up on the plains of Iowa. General Rokellin recruited me to be his corporal. I sign his papers, file them, and send them out when it comes time. The job takes a lot of organizing and focusing and it always keeps me busy.
    I live in a small tent made with iron posts and a green stiff fabric that keeps no warmth in at all. The General lives in a tent next to me. In my tent is a small, fold-out cot with a slim pillow on top of it. I also have a crudely made metal crate filled with my few belongings.
    "Corporal Jenkins!" General Rokellin roared out at me as he walked into my tent.
    I stopped writing and looked up at him, "Yes, General?"
    "You will address me as General Rokellin corporal. You will also salute me when I enter your tent," he stated firmly.
    "Yes sir, General Rokellin. What do you need me for sir? I am in the middle of my leisurely break and..."
    He cut me off, "Corporal! When i have need of you, you will come. Understood?"
    "Understood perfectly, sir," I said, and added a salute to try and calm him down.
    "Come with me, Corporal."
    I looked at my paper and worn out pencil longingly and left. I love to write each night to keep a record of each day to look back on. I closed the door behind me and followed each step the General made.
    He led me to a steel building. It was tall but very plainly colored and shaped. He stopped at the iron door, and I hurried in front of him to open it for him. He strutted inside with his head held high.
    When I opened the door, an immediate smell came to my nose ans seemed to travel through my whole body. I gagged and General Rokellin looked at me nervously. I'd never seen him nervous and shaken up like this before.
    The smell wove itself through my body and tried to come back out my mouth. I held it in while stopping my self from running out the door for a gasp of fresh air. The smell was of burning skin and hair. It was putrid. I gagged again and swallowed it down. I caught the General staring at me. He grabbed me by my uniform and pulled me over in a corner. "Corporal, don't cover your mouth or you'll make them mad," he whispered softly but sternly into my ear.
    "Who..." i started to ask. He looked at me sternly and I kept quiet.
    I followed him through a small hallway and don a flight of stairs into a big room with gigantic machines working. The smell was even worse in here. I took in everything I saw in one glance. I saw the machines, people in dark blue uniforms pouring chemicals into pots, steaming pots, chemicals bubbling up and out of the pots; people climbing out of the pots, clip boards with numbers, and walls covered with dark blue uniforms. Wait. I looked again to where I had seen a person climb out of the pot. Had I imagined it? I looked at the temperature on the side of one of the pots. The red line was in the middle. The heat couldn't be too bad. I looked again. No, the thermometer went from 600 degrees to 1000 degrees! No human could survive a fifth of that! Had I really seen a human climb out of the pot? Had I?
    I looked around for someone I knew and spotted General Rokellin not far away. I hurried over to him and stayed at his side. He was something familiar that I needed right now.
    Something moved next to me, and I glanced to my side. Something had moved in the pot. Something had stirred up the chemicals. I leaned over the side and peered into the steaming pot. Suddenly, something reached out and grabbed my hand, seeming to try and pull itself out. I screamed in terror and jumped back. My breath was raspy and came in short, quick gasps. I clenched my wrist. Where it had grabbed me was a red hand-print. It was burning hot!
    General Rokellin came over to me and glanced at my wrist, "Never, never, watch it happen. Stay away from the pots, Corporal." he said seriously while staring into my eyes.
    He started to walk away. "General Rokellin, sir? What...what was that? That thing that grabbed me. Why can't I look into the pots? Whats in them?" I was overwhelmed with questions coming from my mouth. My brain was sending them so quickly I was stumbling over my own words.
    "Listen, Corporal," he said as he whirled around at me, "Just stay away from everything and everyone. You don't know what you're dealing with down here."
    I didn't reply. What is down here that is so dangerous? General Rokellin had started walking away from me and I walked swiftly to catch up with him. He was talking to a short man in a blue uniform. As I got closer, I got the feeling it was private, so i leaned against the wall and waited. I strained to hear what they were saying.
    "Have we met our goal, Colonel?" General Rokellin said in the Colonel's ear while looking around through a slit between his eyelids.
    "Not yet, General. But we are very close. We've created 9,700 out of the 10,000 needed. If we have a few more hours, we should be able to complete the goal, sir," the Colonel whispered back to him.
    "Good. Good. How is our genetic control working out?"
    "So far, General, we haven't had to destroy even one of them."
    "Good. I'll be back later today, Colonel. Without the Corporal."
    "Yes, sir."
    He started walking back up the flight of stairs. I ran up behind him and said, "General Rokellin, sir? what are they creating down here?"
    He grabbed the collar of my uniform and whispered sternly, "Corporal. Keep quiet until you see the light." He let go of me and kept walking. I followed close behind him.
    What light was he talking about? When I opened the big iron door to the outside for him, the sun poured into the steel building and then I knew what light he had been talking about. "Now Corporal," General Rokellin said to me as he walked to his office, "you are not to be eavesdropping! But since you have...there's no point in keeping it from you. But you may not speak any of this to anyone! Understood?"
    "Yes, General, sir." I replied. I tried not to sound too eager to learn more.
    "Alright. Have you ever heard of soldiers being bred instead of recruited?"
    "No, sir."
    "I am in charge of creating 10,000 soldiers by tomorrow. Tomorrow they will march out and fight."
    "How do they fight? Are they robots?"
    "No, they are not robots and they can die just like you and me. We can breed them at unimaginable rates, and they will be ready for battle right away. You see, Corporal, we add a gene to them that gives them a very strong instinct to fight. That's why you don't want to provoke them. If you cover your mouth, they think that you're saying that they stink and they will attack you."
    "But, how do they create them?"
    "The people working down there mix certain chemicals together in the big pots. In several minutes, those chemicals work together to create five people in one pot. They can create about 1,500 of them every day. We will have an overwhelming amount of soldiers and will, with no trouble at all, win the war."
    "That's amazing, sir!"
    "I didn't want to tell you, or anyone for that matter. The secret's not supposed to get out. If the enemy finds out, we would automatically lose the war!"
    "I promise I won't tell anyone, General. You have my word."
    "Good, Corporal. You may return to your tent now. Be in my office at 400 hours tomorrow morning. The soldiers will be marching out soon after."
     "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
    I returned to my tent and picked up my worn pencil and prepared to write. I thought about what I could write. Then I realized, if the enemy came here and found my journal, the war would be lost. That was it then. I couldn't write anything about this. I had to keep it all in my head and hope that I never got captured and tortured.
    It was 400 hours the next morning and I was rushing to General Rokellin's office. I burst through the door, "Please excuse my late arrival, sir." I said while trying to catch my breath.
    "Slow down, Corporal. I'm ready. Let's go. Stay by my side and stay away from the soldiers at all times," he warned sternly.
    I followed him out the door and into the sunlight that was just coming over the horizon. The sun glowed a bright orange-red. It seemed to not move at all. I heard a sound over to my left and looked over at the steel building. The door was being opened.
    "Remember what I said, Corporal," General Rokellin reminded me.
    The soldiers came out of the door one by one. They lined up in front of the steel building. They stood close together and waited for the orders to start marching towards the sun. They lined up ten soldiers by one thousand soldiers. I saw the Colonel that General Rokellin had been speaking to the day before. He yelled loudly and the mass of soldiers started moving slowly.
    They were so close together that they should have stumbled over each other or tripped and fell. However, they remained in perfect formation. They were like super-humans.
    The first time I saw them, they acted stiff and unearthly. They walked into the horizon. Into the hot, blazing chemicals that they had come out of. Ready for battle.

Reviews

[Poetic Tuesday]

Very well written. C: I love it~

[Willow]

Interesting. It was a bit strange, but definitely well written and very engaging. I don't respond well to military fiction of science fiction, but you're such an amazing writer that it didn't bother me any. Amazing job.

[Kesley]

I LOVE IT! IT IS SO WELL WRITTEN!

[Elizebeth Brooks]

I like this a lot. You wrote it very well, and it has a lot of character to it and a lot of great parts to it.

Sarah.

[Charity]

THIS STORY ROCKS! IT IS SO FREAKY AND SUSPENSEFUL! I LOVE IT!