Split-Life Warriors

Thermodynamics never was Sawdon’s favorite subject. The lecturer’s choice of long words and complicated equations didn’t help the students’ concentration either. Sawdon looked around and confirmed that almost a third of the students were asleep while another third were either talking or playing on their smart phones; probably laughing at photos of cats or something just as retarded. Sawdon looked down at his indestructible old Nokia with its black and white screen, and laughed to himself. It could phone and it could text. The fact that he didn’t have 24 hour access to Facebook didn’t make him any less social.

Minutes went past. The lecturer was now wasting his words talking about old experiences when he was a student himself. Sawdon ignored him, and slowly started to drift off into a world of forests, hills, strong smells and shouting.

His boots were just as bored as he was, but waited patiently at home for the weekend to come.

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All Dormant wanted was a cigarette. He glanced down at his pocket; the bulk of the packet was slowly burning a hole in his trousers. The two tourists in front of him were giving him a headache. Each word that came out of the American couple’s mouths melted into a needle in mid-air and stabbed him in the forehead.

And if their words were needles, their nasal accent was an ongoing power-drill through his templar.

His mind ignored them and drifted off into a wonderful world where he could simply jump over the tourist-information counter, grab them by the shoulders and shout at them for wasting their lives away with complaints and happy meals; a world where he wouldn’t lose his job for speaking his mind. His brain snapped back to reality when the man shouted at him.

“Are YOU even LISTENING to me, mister?!”

The man went on complaining about how the city’s facilities weren’t large enough for them. Dormant managed to listen for seven more seconds before his mind started to drift again. He could never pay much attention with a hang-over.

He might not have been the employee of the month, but man, he was a tough fighter. He’d proven himself several times, and nobody doubted it. These two in front of him must be a different breed of Americans that he had trained with. The American’s he was used to were fit, switched on and very professional. Though what made him smile the most was the fact that they could never out-drink him or his platoon.

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The dusk sky was still. The mix of purple and red above them, in Haque’s mind, was a metaphor for the bloodbath that was soon to come; though he knew well that blood had a much thicker tone to it than the sky that evening.

Battalion Headquarters had warned them of the attack that was about to hit them. But the few men left, six soldiers, somehow chose not believe it that morning. Intelligence had been wrong before. Why can’t it be wrong in their favor, just this once?

But throughout the day sign after sign started to show up, warning them that their lives were soon to be in danger. They started to realize that their fitness, weapon handling and other basic drills were soon to be put to the test. First they noticed how few children were around; they were missing the shrieks and laughter that filled the streets at this time of day. Then, slowly, all the cars and donkeys started to disappear. They finally decided to “stand to” when there were no citizens around at all.

Haque clenched to his rifle and stood firmly next to Burns. They were both nervous, but somehow the fear of death was being taken over by a feeling of excitement. The soldiers had spent the whole day reinforcing their small forward observation post and had effectively turned it into a fortress of sandbags. They all now felt an urge to work on it more, like when you go over your notes five minutes before an exam. But they all knew that the best thing they could do was keep their eyes and ears pinned to the town around them in search for a sign of something suspicious. Not long passed until that sign hit their fort. “Crack”.

Round after round started to pound at them and their sandbags, leaving them little choice but to duck into cover for their lives. The city in front of them turned into a frenzy of men with rifles, Toyota vans full of equipment and the odd RPG – rocket propelled grenade. But something was different, Haque could tell. The rifle fire was never this intense. They could normally have time to pop up and return fire. But not today: today they either stayed under cover, or faced a wall of rounds. No, Haque new that this wasn’t your ordinary fire fight: today there were a couple of new “players” in town.

“PKMs!” Haque shouted around him. “Two PKMs in the building in front of us!”

PKMs were the insurgent’s support weapon of choice. Weighing much more than an assault rifle, the PKM could quickly fire hundreds of heavy rounds with terrifying precision. Haque had the same rank as Burns, but somehow he always ended up taking control. He was a natural leader, just what was needed in these kind of situations. And he new, out of experience, that if they didn’t start firing back at the insurgents they wouldn’t last long without being overrun. In fact, while the two PKMs kept their heads down, about a dozen men quickly and quietly made their way towards the small fort, ready to try to climb the walls. And Haque was not going to let this happen.

“Burns, fire back at the PKMs! Get their attention!” Burns brain didn’t even process the information. Listening to an order, no matter how dangerous, had become second nature. In a leap of faith, Burns poked his head and his rifle over the wall and started firing at the building across the town square. This encouraged the other men to do the same, while Haque crawled his way to the other side of their fort.

Haque was trying to find the perfect spot: some sort of hole or position that let him shoot at the approaching men without exposing himself to the heavy weapons. It took him about three minutes to find it, which is a long time when in the back of your head you know it’s just a matter of minutes before your friends start to get shot. Haque shoved a sandbag a few centimeters to the right, and placed his rifle in the gap. He could see between five and eight men, cautiously but quickly running through the open space that was the town square, towards their position.

His rifle leaped into action, calmly snapping rounds into their unprotected bodies. Two of them fell almost instantly, and the rest froze on the spot: they had nothing to hide behind and nowhere to run. Three decided to lie down, and reduce their target area. The rest started sprinting. But it was too late for them. Haque took deep breaths, and one by one killed the lot of them.

Burns and Haque were both startled by a shout that didn’t come from the screen.

“HAQUE! What the HELL do you think you’re doing?!” They paused the game and sat perfectly still, listening to Haque’s wife. “You NEVER help me around the house. I’ve asked you a million times to wash the dishes and you haven’t even TOUCHED them! Tell your friend to go HOME and come here righ...”

Burns closed the living-room door, and turned her shrieks into a muffled hum.
“Pub?” asked Burns. They both smiled. “After twelve years with her the Taliban are going to be a relief” Burns joked. They were both looking forwards to going on tour together to Afghanistan in the next few months.

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The pub was full; exactly how he liked it. Cooke could swear that the girl in the corner was glancing at him, but tonight he had something better to look forwards to.
He was always the first at the pub, he enjoyed having a pint or two before the lads joined him.

“What a bunch!” he thought to himself, smiling. He only saw them for an evening a week and for about two weekends a month, not to mention the two week annual camp each year. But out of all his friends, girlfriends and co-workers he had met throughout his life, he had never had as much as an understanding than he did with these guys.

They had all been through tough times together: freezing mornings after barely two hours of sleep, more than an average man’s week of exercise (which, unfortunately, isn’t much now days) in only one day, miles and miles of walking with a digging weight on their backs, hours and hours of practicing the same tricks over and over again until they could do it without even thinking. This list of hard experiences goes on, and they loved every second of it.
They all knew each other’s limits. They had all seen every drop of each other’s character and they all shared a bond that can’t be described by any book, film or video game. Cooke trusted them all with his life.
But little did he know that they’d soon be saving each other’s life on a daily basis, during the Northern Invasion. And little did he know how much the Territorial Army would make a difference during that war. But they; Sawdon, Dormant, Haque, Burns and all the other split-life warriors all had a few more weeks to enjoy their civilian lives before it kicked off.