The Refugees

The pull-tab gouged his raw finger as he forced open the tin ration can, but it wasn’t anything he could feel. Food was survival issue from here on, a few lumps of meat floating in specially concocted gelatin full of the vitamins and essentials a fighting man needed. He’d done this before. One hand to slide through the carbine strap, the other arm cinching his corner of the stretcher up so he could hold the can to his mouth and scoop its greasy contents into his mouth, almost sucking his fingers for the tallow they gathered. Had to be careful not to drop the stretcher or the can, not a second could be spared for picking up either. He grunted as his latest scrape ran into his stubble. He might have snarled.

The monumental burden of his pack pushed his boots into the ugly ground with every step he took, the dirt long since washed into brown grease that covered hard bedrock. It provided the downward force, and the stretcher he bore offered the extra jerk needed to risk a damaged ankle with each step. His pack wasn’t full of valuable supplies, either. Just a few ration cans of the horseflesh, two dozen bullets and a blanket already riddled with bullet holes from the last few men to carry it. All the rest of it was gold taken from the eastern city before it fell, evacuated on the backs of the weary column of men. Two days they had been marching; they only brought the wounded man on the stretcher because he was an officer, and well regarded by the unit commander. The other wounded had been dumped in heaps in the warehouses and alleys with cheap grenades. The amphetamine supply had given out long before the city had fallen, and they had only aerial resupply as they walked, the crates often ricocheting along stony slopes and smashing into men. They hadn’t seen the enemy in a week, other than the planes that roared overhead in intermittent roars of propeller and machine-gun, clearing away clumps of stragglers with cheerful waggles of their wings on their way to more important targets.

The last five men in their column to die hadn’t even warranted glances. As turtles on their way to the birthing pond, other people only existed as warnings of danger, expendable drones to stave off enemy attacks on one's flesh. His carbine was cold and clogged with mud from the few times he’d stumbled setting out. He had been lucky enough to pry it off a dead foe in the city; it restricted him to using enemy ammunition, but that was not a hardship, as even enemy ammunition was more common and reliable than that of his own army.

The ragged grunts of mid-tour had given way to the thousand-yard skeletons that surrounded him in mindless plodding. Their green uniforms had grown more useful, as the mud coating them from the shoulders down would certainly help conceal them if the enemy somehow lost the night-vision systems that picked them off in pitch darkness. Rank insignia long since removed in hopes of avoiding the plagues of marksmen questing for the lowliest corporal, his unit’s chain of command functioned on facial recognition, what little could be done through the dirt and rich clouds of hair that grew down from their scalps and out from their mouths.

They had been looking forward to refuge at the nearest base, but a day after leaving the city they had seen the smoke of its burning go up. They had hoped for the next base along the road, but two days later their column was caught in a horrendous crossfire that left almost a sixth of their men dead before they realized they’d been enfiladed by their own side. A brief discussion later and they received the news: both bases had fallen. North was the only escape now.

His boot hit the edge of a mortar crater. The thin sole split open, his ankle wrenched in what would be pain if he could still feel, and the wounded officer on the stretcher lolled to the side, dislodging blood clots that were holding his entrails together. Three steps later, he was back in the routine, scooping up the meat with animal smacking.

A few hundred steps later it happened again. The men entered a defile, the dirt of its high banks washed down to form a putrid slurry of mud almost thigh-deep. It squished into his torn boot, stagnant and cold, and he groaned then. The emptied ration can splashed into the ooze and the sound reminded many ears to start working again.

They all knew the sound of propellers like beasts of prey, but it took them precious seconds to spur glazed brains into action. By the time they realized it the plane had swooped in. Tired of its fellow planes making idle passes across the infantry they had found, this fighter-bomber was coming in along their axis of march to clear them in one pass. The column was deep in the defile and bogged down, with no shelter to any side. Guns chattered as it made its attack run- heavy autocannons designed to crumple buildings and flatten tanks.

Adrenaline spouted from glands gummed over by fatigue. He yanked his arm from the stretcher and dove beneath it. The explosive shells blasted long parallel ripples in the limestone. The other three bearers toppled in various sections and the officer sloshed into a gummy pulp.

Dozens of men died as they caught shells directly, bodies reduced to severed ankles and arms. Rock chips sliced into necks and penetrated faces and eyes. Bloodied scraps of uniform and jagged metal shards arced up to splat against the walls. There was an atrocious splashing as untold thousands of meat chunks slid into the mud with hollow plops.

The subsonic thrums of explosions far along the ravine faded through the mud, while slimy warm things brushed against him. He slid upright with mud dribbling from his nose and mouth without thinking to check if the plane was coming back, panting and spluttering to get rid of mud and beef tallow at the same time in a long, shivering paroxysm of vomiting. The few other survivors wailed as they slid beneath the mud on ruined legs and suffocated; he couldn’t hear. Filthy hands clutched his ruined carbine.

By the time he looked up, everyone was dead.

Here his troubles began.