Chakrov (A NEW KIND OF MONSTER STORY, FROM "The Streets of Malthusia")

Copyright 2007 - Jason Savage

So the younger boy asked the older boy for the second time if he wanted to go see the chakrov dance in the big field at midnight.

"But mother won't Let me." said the older boy.

"Tell her only that you'll stay with my family tonight."

"But why? Why would I stay with your family?"

"Tell her we' ll have onion soup tonight."

"But then she'll want to visit."

"Tell her we don't have enough." said the younger, shorter boy.

"Could you tell your mother there is not enough for her?"

"No." said the young boy. His eyes were dark. Night was bleeding into everything. The moon was up and time was short. He looked at the older boys face, grainy in the moon glow.

"Then tell your old hen that we will leave early on a hunt and you must be with my father to get a seat in the truck. Promise her fresh meat."

"And what if I don't bring home any meat." He imagined the pale face of his mother, disappointed upon his return the following day.

"I think you're afraid of the chakrov."

"No."

"And you are making excuses."

"No." said the elder boy.

They were walking home, the city unfolding before them like deeply shadowed origami. The younger boy produced a crudely rolled cigarette, lit it in a barrel fire that was tended by two dirty faced men.

"You want some?" he asked.

"No."

"You afraid of the chakrov?"

"No."

"Don't seem like you should be, you're twice my size."

"I'm not afraid."

"And you fight better than me."

"But I've never fought a chakrov."

"Do you know anybody who has?"

"Only dead men."

"Is that why you are afraid?"

"I'm not afraid."

They came to the corner of the block where the older boy lived. They stopped, facing one another in a flickering street light.

"Will you go?"

"Yes."

"What will you tell your mother?"

"I don't know."

The younger boy waited below as his friend went inside. A moment later the tall boy returned, an olive canvas knapsack in his right hand, a chunk of dry bread in his left.

"I know a shortcut." said the younger boy.

"I hate your shortcuts Tony." said the tall boy, but followed him into the darkened alley.

"Are you afraid of my shortcuts now too?"

"No."

"Come on yousally."

"Don't call me sally."

"Or what?"

The tall boy stopped in the gloom, stared down at the shorter boy he knew only as Tony.

"Nuthin." Then he added, "Call me by my name. I call you by yours."

"Okay El."

"It's Eli."

"Okay El." said Tony.

"How far is your place?" asked Eli.

"Not far."

They were at the top of a hill. Below a fight had broken out between two drifters, one man was beating the other with a board ripped from a pallet. Both were swearing.

"Time for another shortcut." Tony said. They ducked into another alley.

The smell of rotted food and urine and death overwhelmed them. They walked slow, feet sliding so as not to trip. They could hear the broken glass crunching beneath their feet.

At the end of the alley stood a crooked gray lamppost, it's light flickering on and off like a sick and confused firefly. At the mouth of the alley a stout green dumpster, cancered with gouts of copper and brass colored rust. In the distance, the scratching of rats in the dumpster and on the lid.

Rising from the top of the dumpster, bloated and pale and much like a surrender flag above an embattled bunker, was a womans arm, wrist broken, fingers fanned apart as if waving hello. On the fourth finger a gold ring clutching a clear stone shot with prisms in the sparse light.

"Think you can get it?" asked Tony. Eli had paused for a moment, transfixed by the diamond.

"Nah."

"A week's worth of good food probly in that stone." tried Tony.

"I ain't no thief." answered Eli.

"She's dead."

"It's still her ring."

"What if it ain't still her arm?"

"Her arm?"

"Yeah. What if it's just some dead broad's arm, not her whole body? Could you take it if it was just an arm?"

"I suppose."

"Then don't look in the dumpster, just imagine it's just an arm in there, not a whole body."

"But I'm not a thief." repeated Eli.

"Course you ain't. But you ain't a fool either."

"Damn. How's some broad end up in a dumpster down here?"

"Remember, it's how's some broad's arm end up in a dumpster down here?"

Eli was inching toward the dumpster, his fingers fanning then flexing with each step. Tony watched but tried to look disinterested. Eli pulled once, twice. On the third pull the ring came off, along with a clot of soft, white tissue. Eli dropped the ring onto the busted pavement, let the treasure seperate itself from the rest.

"Don't lose it." said Tony, his voice conspiratorial.

"Got it." Eli said, snatched the ring off the street. "Let's go."

"Not far from my place now."

"Good." said Eli, then asked. "You still think I'm afraid?"

Tony stopped, turned to Eli. Eli unsheathed his hunting knife, unscrewed the compass on the butt of the knife, dropped the ring inside.

"Never thought you were afraid. I'se just sayin' that." Then lit another cigarette.

The building Tony lived in was a five story concrete structure with unbroken windows only on the top floor. The face of the building looked raked and worn, but it was true, with square corners and level turns.

Eli followed Tony into the ground level entrance and up five flights of stairs.

They entered a small apartment full of noise from children, and smoke from dirty men. Two of the men sat at a small table near the far wall. They wore blank expressions on faces that might have been drawn in charcoal. They watched two small boys swordfight with crinkled cardboard blades. In front of the kitchen sink stood another man, this one with a long, slender woman in black leather coiled within his arms.

"Hey dad." said Tony. Eli had followed him through the kitchen, past the swordfight, and straight toward the sink.

"Hey boy. What kept you so frickin late?"

"This is my friend, Eli."

It was the first time Eli had ever heard Tony speak his whole name.

"He what kept you?" asked the father.

"Yeah." answered Tony.

"Where you live young man?" asked the woman, still captured in the man's arms.

"Across the old reservoir, not far from the power plant."

"In twelve?"

"Yeah." answered Eli.

The woman rolled her eyes, looked up at her man.

"That's out near Protest Park." she said. The men nodded silently.

"You see the last protest?" she asked.

"Nah. My mom wouldn't let me go, but I heard the shots."

"You goin hunting tonight?" asked Tony of his father.

"We're going later. Waiting for the rest of 'em now."

"Can we go?"

"No room. Truck seats six, bed'll be full on the way back."

"Okay." answered Tony. Did not sound disappointed.

"Getting up early for a stickball game." said Tony.

They made for the far bedroom. Across rimracked floors and dirty lime green tiles. The hall window, jaggedly striped with gray duct tape nearly glowed with the coolness of the night air. Eli stopped in the window, face to face with the moon.

"Come on." said Tony from a swath of light in the doorway.

"Okay, okay."

The room smelled of a hundred nights sleep, the bed a hundred more. Tony opened the window. It slid and caught like sandpaper on old wood. They were five floors up, Eli observed, as Tony lit a cigarette.

"Is that your mother?" asked Eli.

"Nah." answered Tony.

"Where is she?"

"Out working."

"What does she do?"

"What do most women do?"

"Oh." said Eli. "Who is that woman?"

"Her friend."

The sound of steps outside the door. Tony tossed his cigarette far across the street below. It touched down in a small blossom of orange sparks. The two small boys came in, went immediately to bed.

Then the sound of Tony's father and the whore. The muffled voices of men in the kitchen. Doors slamming and the sound of a large truck leaving toward the hills.

"They're gone." said Eli.

"Yep."

"How long will we wait?"

"Not long."

They listened until the woman left the apartment. Heard her whistling down the block. When the noise had disappeared they crept slowly through the kitchen, down the staircase and down the street in the same direction the truck had departed nearly an hour before.

"My mother'll be home soon, but she's coming from the city side." said Tony, gesturing behind them.

"Is your father hunting chakrov."

"No. Deer, rabbit, coyote. Not chakrov."

"Why not?"

"That would be backwards."

"Oh." said Eli, and dropped his head.

"Beyond those hills." said Tony.

They walked out beyond the light of the city into the foothills. The ground was hard in the hills and the grass was dry. It broke beneath their feet with each step. A sound like a campfire crackling as it walked across the land.

"We're almost there." said Tony.

Eli wiped sweat from his brow, smiled. His eyes were wide with anticipation, swallowing up the darkness whole and filtering out what he could not use. They had passed ruined buildings, one tall structure that was little more than the burned out husk of a tall, cylindrical thing. It's edges hung ragged, like a scarecrow torn in the wind.

Beyond the hills was low ground that had once been a lake. It's edges were dotted with the remains of small buildings, fossils of the age when man congregated beside water for comfort and joy.

Tendrils of tall grass ran out to a plateau near the center of the lake bed. The grass was taller than Tony and nearly as tall as Eli. They crawled through it slowly, no faster than the wind would blow.

In the distance Eli heard the shrill cry of a chakrov. It let a chill up his spine but he continued on, his confidence in Tony as strong as ever.

"You afraid?" asked Tony once while they waited for another gust of wind. The moon was high and bright and through the grass Eli could see his face, slashed in the grass shadows like a tiger.

"Nah. Got my knife." Eli answered, holding up his survival knife, compass bobbing in it's butt.

Eli wondered how sure he sounded. Another howl from a chakrov, this one behind them.

"Will it come this way?" Eli whispered.

"No. Chakrov don't like the tall grass."

Whole pillars of sound rose from the plateau. Octaves of which Eli had never heard or even imagined. Desperation, anxiety and hunger were suddenly singing in a strangely inhuman voice. And they were very near the edge of the plateau.

Tony reached forward, parted the yellow grass before him into a tall,lopsided V. Eli did the same. The chakrov danced before their very eyes.

There were at least a dozen of the beasts, long muscular torsos gleaming pale blue in the moonlight. Heads canine, but twice the size of any Eli had ever seen, bright, slender fangs that exceeded the jaws in both directions. From the way the beasts walked and danced he could tell that they bore some sort of retractable claw in each foot, for each step brought forth a shiver from the soil as if freshly breached by a dagger.

They were circling one particular chakrov who had curled into fetal position in the center of the group. The affected beast was mewing with a sort of curdled tenderness that the others lacked. From the darkness opposite the boys a huge beast materialized, and the ring of chakrov that had been circling and pulsing to it's own beat suddenly paused. All was silent on the plateau, but for the rhythm of Eli's heart hammering in his chest.

The newcomer was given passage to the center without challenge. His fellow chakrov not mustering so much as a glance in his direction. Suddenly the mewing stopped. Eli felt his eyes bulging wider, so much so that he worried they would give him away. He could not pull his gaze from the beasts. Sweat coursing over muscles that rippled just below shimmering sheaths of skin. Fangs vicious yet unmoving, like drawn stilettos, waiting to visit murder on some faceless victim.

The beasts moved swiftly in concert with one another. The weaker creature mewed the desperate, forlorn plea once again and rolled over onto her back. In the air above her steam rose. She had been trapping heat beneath herself with purpose, for her underbelly rippled with the instinctive movements of the unborn escaping the womb.

The larger beast paused over her for a moment, examined her torso, her hind quarter turned up and inside out, her neck straining and twisted with all the exertion of natural birth. Lifted it's snout as if smelling rain in the air.

With a swift motion of it's head the dominant chakrov bent and ripped free a tract of skin from the underbelly of the female. Blood gushed like water from a freshly burst spring. She would not live.

Five pups spilled out onto the plateau. Covered in gore and even as they were still being born beginning to consume the mother. The pitched whining a narrow rendition of their mothers fading voice.

A stronger wind surged over the plateau. The boys shrunk away, fearful that the wind might expose them. Began to creep through the deep pale expanse toward safety.

The cry of the chakrov, so tenderly rupturing the silence between themselves and their prey. The wet lapping of newborn pups gorging on innards somewhere beneath the wind. Beneath that the sound of stilleto claws digging for traction in loose soil, much like the sound of blade thrust to the hilt into bone.

Eyes a golden riot of bloodthirst and fury fixed the boys in their grassy blind.

Tony stood, stumbled, ripped free fists full of pale chaff, fell. Eli watched, eyes dry and bulging, heart like a huge fist, pounding against his chest walls. A chakrov set upon Tony. The smell of hot blood filled the night as the chakrov excised the boys throat with a single swipe of his left paw. Followed by the sound of the pups, clamoring through the grass toward the fresh kill.

Then, as the pups closed hungrily in on his disemboweled friend, Eli turned to gaze into the blast-furnace eyes of the lead chakrov. For a fleeting moment on the plateau, all was deathly still. And the chakrov leapt.

Men At War (A Short Story From "The Streets of Malthusia")

Men At War

Copyright Jason Savage 2007



The blaze orange sign had once read: "Men At Work." but a passing soldier had, probably with wet charcoal, crossed out the "Work" at the bottom of the sign. In its place he had written "War." Just below and to the left of the word was the pattern of a shotgun blast. Private Joe Simpson figured that he agreed with whoever had shot at the sign.

For a moment in the street he paused and looked over his shoulder. He was thinking about going home. Just throwing his rifle to the ground and running like hell. In the distance the sound of a machine gun beckoned. Just before Simpson turned to climb the next hill, the eyes of a young private fixed on him. The boy was probably no older than fifteen, with a purple scar across his chin and a long,crude cigarette hanging from his lips. The look in the young privates eyes reminded Simpson of the look his father, a farmer, used to give him when he tried to get home early. It was the look that said simply: "I'm not doing this alone."

And no, he would not.

An explosion on the horizon; a low, narrow spray of flame, then a cloud of the blackest smoke Simpson had ever seen. His eyes struggled to discern movement between a line of steel tanks in olive drab skin.

The tanks fired rapidly. Beneath Simpson's feet the ground trembled. Another large explosion, this one far away. To his left Simpson saw a young officer, a lanky, twentiesh young man with dirty blond hair and a weeks old beard rounding up fresh soldiers for some sort of offensive. His hands and arms were moving like an air controller on a landing strip. The men surrounded him in a small ocean of dirty green.

Beside the officer stood a line of four men, from crates they were producing ragged, body length capes that approximated the color of the soil of the battlefield.

"Best to stay prone! Move through the fields like that and you won't get your helmet shot off!" the officer screamed over the rattle of a machine gun just behind him.

Simpson stood in line for a cape. The men in front of him took turns wordlessly, affixing the capes at the neck. Each three small snaps buried beneath a riot of explosions.

"Remember, stay low! Their tanks can't see low so you should be able to get right through! Their infantry fell back this morning after we shelled 'em hard before dawn!"

A mortar hit no more than twenty yards away from the embankment nearest the men. The officer began to duck and cover his head, caught himself, and continued on:"We need you men to find a path to the bridge over the Pemaquid River to the east. It's one of two escape routes for their heavy guns. If we can shut it down we've got them in a shooting gallery for at least a day, maybe two without reinforcements Our fuel line coming out of the west is fucked so we don't have air support for at least seventy-two hours. We need that bridge taken out ASAP to cut off their infantry and reinforcements."

The officer raised his right hand, pointed back across the bridge Simpson had just come across, beyond the Men At War sign: " We need to hold this island at least until we've got birds in the air again, otherwise these fascist bastards will roll right into Bangor. Nuthin' but flat ground and women and children between here and there."

Simpson felt the last statement like a fist in the gut. He had a woman and child between here and there. It was his turn in line. He took a cape, snapped the three buttons at the neck, found a thin cord at waist height, tied it loosely.

His rifle was not military issue, but a lever action .30.30 that he had inherited from his father. It had a maple stock and a cheap, but accurately calibrated, scope, side mounted opposite the cartridge slot. Simpson knew he was deadly accurate with the rifle. He always had been on deer and coyote, but never men.

Shoulder to shoulder with men fighting with family also in harm's way, Simpson climbed the embankment. Together they peered down into hell.

It was a battlefield of the disembodied. Tanks and men torn, ripped, strewn over the acreage like some garden of death. Even the fires, whole within themselves, seemed to hint that some greater inferno had already passed.

The men knew, however, that the deadliest threats remained. The battle hardened warriors that now owned these fields of war were like boxers in the eleventh round of a prize fight.

As they watched, a pair of tanks squared off like gunfighters in a wild west duel. Each fired, once, twice, and on the second both scored partial hits. The enemy tank, its right track wounded by the second volley from his opponent, fired a third shot at the opposing tank. It was a direct hit. The friendly tank burst into flames.

Simpson and the rest of the men watched as the two soldiers from the tank opened the hatch and tried to escape. Their feet had just hit the ground when the enemy hatch opened, and from within a soldier with a machine gun rose like a crew-cut jack-in-the-box. The men fled across a field of a thousand acres or more. There was little cover but for the remnant infernos of war.

The machine gun rattled, the sound dull and far off to Simpson. It took a sickeningly long time for the fleeing soldiers to fall as they should have. They died behind the gutted, scorched remnants of a shelled pick-up truck.

The enemy tank commander with the machine gun climbed down from his crippled vehicle, examined the right track, beckoned the other two soldiers from within. They examined the scene, cleared the area the way police would clear a building. For five hundred feet in all directions they were alone.

With the nearest skirmish over, Simpson followed a pack of rectangular soil colored capes to the east of the battlefield. They were twenty strong, a demolitions man named Coyle in tow, which made them twenty-one. They kept low on the ridge, careful not to allow enemy artillery or recon to sight them. Simpson thought more than once about taking a shot at the tank soldiers he had just watched kill two of his compatriots. He knew they were outside of the range of his rifle. For that there was the sick, queasy feeling of regret in his stomach.

The ridge declined and turned away from the battlefield no more than four hundred yards from where they had watched the tank battle. To follow the ridge any longer would have meant leaving the battle altogether. Instead they cut through the lowest portion of the valley between it and the next ridge, then continued east at least a dozen feet below the western battlefield.

As the forest grew darker and the thunder of war more distant, Simpson found himself more often checking his ammunition, his rifle, his canteen. The dark shadow of imminent violence was falling over him, coloring the corners of his eyes in violent shades. His conscience searched for a place to hide somewhere deep within, as the narrowest, purest places of his heart shrunk away, allowing for the necessary passage of hatred. Inward flooded rage, like a funnel capturing all the emotion of the battle. Like a brutal strike to the head, his vision turned pink, then red, then purple.

He was prepared to take lives. The blued iron of his rifle felt warm in his grip. The steel ammunition box on his right hip bulged like gout.

They began to climb a narrow ridge to the left. Coyle was directly in front of him, his canvas backpack was marked DANGER! HIGH EXPLOSIVES! in bright red block lettering. Simpson read it each time Coyle's cape slid off one side of the hump or the other, before he pulled it back over the bulging pack.

The ridge was an escalator of men and steel, khaki and sweat. Explosions and shrapnel rained in the west, machine gun fire broke the solitude of sacred last words on the battlefield and Simpson climbed. Just climbed and gripped his rifle. His eyes drew full with what seemed to be the remaining moisture in his head. He had no tears, just wet to blur the words on Coyle's backpack. Just wet. Then they were at the top of the ridge.

The ground sprayed upwards suddenly, owing it's behavior to a machine gunner firing wildly from the next ridge. Simpson was staring across the ridge at the place of impact. Chunks of dry dirt spattered off his face.

A bouquet of orange gunfire blossomed on the ridge opposite them. The men returned fire. Simpson was still not entirely onto the ridge. A young soldier who Simpson recognized but did not know lay clutching a leg wound. He knelt, ripped back the boy's trousers. A bullet had carved a hole through his thigh.

"You still gotta shoot." Simpson said, "You still gotta shoot."

There were three large hunks of granite no more than a hundred feet along the edge of the ridge, but lower than where they now lay prone. Instinctively some of the men fought toward them. Simpson knelt with the wounded soldier.

"Get up. Get up. Your daddy didn't raise you to lay down and die." Simpson said.

"My daddy ain't here fightin' with me mister."

"You got to keep shootin'. We need ever'bit of cover we can get."

Just below them a mortar exploded. They went deaf for a moment. Words passed in their eyes. The boy shouldered his rifle, turned to the hostile ridge. His blood pooled in a depression in the soil, steam rose. Simpson shouldered his rifle, scoped the ridge. His crosshairs caught a flash of orange, he squeezed off a shot just behind the muzzle fire. An enemy soldier fell forward with a fist sized hole in his neck.

"Fuckin' shot." said the boy. Then continued firing. His rifle was too big for his body. The recoil lifted the muzzle six inches with each shot. His leg was spurting blood.

Simpson levered his rifle, listened to the smooth, clean sound of another cartridge slipping into the chamber, scoped the ridge. For a moment there was an immense silence. Simpson and the boy looked at one another. They were laying flat on their bellies just behind a narrow rim on the top of the ridge. Coyle fell between them, his canvas backpack tight in his right fist.

"What's your name boy?" asked Simpson, as if Coyle were not between them.

"Dunn."

"Your father own the farm over in Knapson?"

"Yep."

"How come he ain't here with you?"

"Took my mother and sisters and headed for the hills. Says it's a fools war we're fighting."

"A fool's war huh?" asked Simpson.

"Yep."

"You ever known of a war that didn't get started by fools?" said Coyle.

"Nah." said Simpson. "We need to get digging some cover while we can."

"I don't have a shovel." said the Dunn boy.

"Use a rock."

Simpson and Coyle did most of the digging, the Dunn boy kept watch of the enemy ridges. He fired occasionally at movement, but his eyes were glassy and his arms were spaghetti. They did not expect him to hit anything.

"Careful not to draw too much attention." said Simpson.

The soldiers behind the granite boulders were pinned down. One had been shot through the head and from the trench they could see his blood brooking down through a tiny stream bed. The ridge was passing into late evening shadow. The blood was as dark as oil.

An hour later they were in darkness. Somewhere deep in the forest a coyote howled. The full moon towered somewhere behind a cloud bank.

"That granite won't be worth shit after one good shelling." said Simpson.

"True." said Coyle. Then added, "It'll crumble like blue cheese."

The Dunn boy had passed out or fallen asleep. They didn't try and decide which.

"He's lost some blood." said Coyle. "It's all over my pants."

"He's young. He'll make it or he won't."

"It's the smell, man. I don't know if it's the blood, or he pissed himself, or what, but something stinks over here."

They dug the trench two feet deep and piled the dirt high around the edges. From above it would have looked like a big, bold J with a crooked, white piece of granite crossing it's top. Simpson was at the top, Coyle near the curl at the bottom and the Dunn boy lay deep near the end.

"I mean, why would they want to kill off the farmers? If it's population control they want, why not do it in the cities with all the criminals and perverts?" asked Simpson, more to himself than Coyle.

"Cause they figure they can run your farm cheaper and better than you can."

"I'd like to see that." said Simpson.

"Don't matter the truth." said Coyle. "Only matters what they can convince that war machine to do."

"Yep." answered Simpson.

There was a whisper from amid the granite boulders.

"Psst."

"What?"

"Hey."

"Hey what?" asked Simpson.

"There's room down here if you want to come."

"No."

"Suit yourself."

Coyles eyes fixed Simpsons. "You don't want to get down there?"

"What would we do with him?"

"He'll make it or he won't." answered Coyle, reminding Simpson of his earlier comment.

"Not my place to decide." said Simpson.

"Fine." said Coyle. The sky was turning over to cobalt, the last color before dawn.

The Dunn boy stirred, rolled over, and was gone again.

"He's fucking sleeping." said Coyle.

"Wake him up."

"Fine."

"How's his wound."

"Must've stopped a while ago, ground's dry."

Coyle reached over, shook the boy. He would not wake.

Simpson was staring into his scope, trying to adjust to the grainy landscape before him. The fine lines on the opposite ridge slowly began to come into view. He saw three soldiers huddled behind a machine gun turret.

"I got three in my scope."

"Nah. You got shit. It's still dark out here man."

"I got three in my scope, Coyle. How're the boys down ridge looking."

Coyle leaned over him. Simpson felt the man's weight shift across him, then back.

"They're awake, but.....You aren't gonna start shooting yet are you?"

"You want me to let them go first?"

"Well no. It's just, well."

"The way I see it, they're not going away unless we send 'em away, so let's get started."

The soldiers huddled in the granite jumped as Simpson squeezed off his first shot. The enemy soldier on the right fell with a bullet hole in his right shoulder. The others scattered to the left. They had a short distance to run to cover. Simpson caught the front soldier in the hip with his second shot. He smiled as he listened to the man screaming in agony.

"Ain't he making a ruckus." said Coyle.

From below a different voice came up at them,"What the hell 're you doing?"

"Fighting a war."

"Fuck!"

"What else are we gonna do? Hope they forget about us?"

Coyle was laughing because he knew Simpson was talking to the Sergeant. The Sergeant had seen more war than ten average men.

"Hey." said Coyle, slapping Simpson's arm. "He probly don't want a farmer tellin' him his business."

"Then he probably don't want a farmer carrying a rifle for him, cause those fucker's over there are tellin' me mine."

"Shut up." said the Sergeant from behind the granite.

"I'll shut up and stop shooting when you send somebody that can do it better." answered Simpson.

The hip-shot enemy soldier continued to bawl. A whipporwhil announced the arrival of morning. The first rays of dawn broke somewhere behind the bold J in which they lay.

Simpson peered through his scope across the divide. His wounded enemy had been left to die. There were no other soldiers within a hundred feet of him, and the machine gun had been abandoned.

"Can't hear 'em moving now." said Coyle.

The soldier was young, probably not eighteen. His face was dirty, and his bottom lip was split. What part of his mouth that was not stained with blood looked very dry. He had not had a drink for more than a day. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair stabbed down into his face, piercing his colorless forehead with dark V's of greasy hair. Simpson set the crosshairs on the boy's face and squeezed the trigger. All sound beyond the snap of his rifle ceased.

"Now you're really fucking with 'em." said Coyle. "That's quite a fucking shot."

"Not really. We used to shoot squirrels at sixty yards. His head was at least three times that big."

Simpson felt rage going red, then purple in the corners of his eyes. What remained of his decency was suffocating slowly. Soon he would go blue as a babe deprived of breath.

The Dunn boy awoke, looked over the edge of the trench, slumped backward, as if he had been shot.

"I-I, ah shit." said the Dunn boy.

"What." said Coyle.

"I thought this was all a dream."

Simpson was reloading his rifle and wiping dirt off the scope. He looked around the trench. Yes, it definitely looked like a J. A great big bold printed J on the top of a ridge, with three damned fool soldiers burrowed down like rabbits inside.

In the distance a tank fired. Behind them the sun was rising deliberately. Simpson slouched low, hauled off his canteen.

"Better to stay low with the sun behind us now." Simpson said.

"Yep." confirmed Coyle.

The Sergeant below them on the ridge was whistling to get their attention. Simpson threw a rock down at him, then yelled "Whaaaaaat!" so loud that Coyle figured an enemy tank commander could have heard him from a half a mile off.

"Why'd you stop shooting?" asked the Sergeant.

"Go to hell! I shoot when I want and I sit when I want." he yelled down, then added, "Why don't you do some shootin' there GI fuckin' Joe?"

"Fuck you." came the answer.

"You too." Simpson smiled.

Coyle was laughing hard when the next shots were fired. Simpson looked down as chunks of white granite and lead ricocheted into the forest below them.

"I give 'em three hours until they're scrambling to get up here with us." said Simpson.

"Probly." said Coyle.

The Sergeant was sitting with his back against the boulder, his rifle across his lap, his eyes wide.

"You think that hunk of granite's gonna hold out that long?"

"No. But they can't make a run until they've got a little shade to cover them."

"We could cover them." said Coyle.

"You mean I could cover them?" asked Simpson.

"Yeah. I guess." answered Coyle.

"This rifle's for shooting, not warfare. Slidin' that lever just to cover some damned fool Sergeant to bring more fire my way's a good way to get my head shot off."

"But-"

"But nothing. I ain't going toe to toe with a pair of machine guns with this little rifle. That's a far cry from shooting little Johnnie over there in the face."

Coyle was silent. Below, the Sergeant and his men endured a merciless battering.

One of the boulders actually broke in half, another was quickly cut down by machine gun fire. In all, the seventeen soldiers below found themselves huddled behind half the cover they had just that morning possessed.

Before it was over the Sergeant was dead, shot three times, twice in the chest. There were only four soldiers remaining in the rubble of granite below. They had fought hard and had killed nearly as many of the enemy as they had lost. Simpson thought a little more of them than he had when they started out. In the J at the top of the ridge Coyle and Simpson were still unharmed. The Dunn boy had lost consciousness hours before. Coyle was shouldering the Dunn boy's rifle.

"You think I ought to check on the boy?" asked Coyle.

"Nah."

"What if he ain't breathing?"

"What if?"

"Well, it just seems...."

"You ain't gonna go bury him right now if he is, and you ain't gonna give him back his rifle if he ain't, so leave him be."

"Yep." answered Coyle.

"Psst." Came a voice from below.

"What?" asked Simpson, as loudly as he dared.

"We think we can make it."

"I ain't got enough ammunition to cover you."

"Yeah. We're just gonna run for it. You got a first aid kit up there?"

"No. Don't want your wounded anyway."

"What?"

"Don't want your wounded."

"What the fuck-"

"I said leave 'em there or I'll shoot 'em when they get up here." said Simpson. He sounded like a man speaking to children.

"You just gonna leave 'em to die?" asked the voice.

"Nope. But for now leave 'em."

"Okay. But one of 'ems my brother and I ain't leavin' him to die."

"No you're not." said Simpson. "He's gonna help save all our asses."

"Okay." said the voice, acknowledging the fact that Simpson had more of a plan than he.


When the four healthy soldiers arrived Simpson took stock of their weapons and ammunition. He sent the smallest soldier back down the ridge with a box of ammunition and instructions.

While they waited they shared stories, of death and family and war. The soldier returned, and they started out. The time was an hour past dark.

They crept down along the narrowest, lowest stretch of the ridge. It began to rain. Simpson had been waiting for that rain. The tremble of the rain covered their steps. The six men, single file, reached the foot of the enemy ridge.

"Now spread out wide, wait for the cover." said Simpson.

They spread out so far they could not see one another, hunkered down. Simpson kept the breach of his rifle under his arm, his hand cupped over the scope. Without the moon they were invisible, as was their enemy. All at once gunfire erupted from the granite embankment of the wounded soldiers. The enemy waited, waited, then returned fire.

They climbed. The soil was wet. It came loose in their hands, beneath their feet. They carved slides as wide as their shoulders moving up the ridge. Counting orange blossoms of fire as they went, preparing.

As his eyes crested the ridge Simpson caught a glimpse of Coyle's head in profile between two bushes. Behind him on the western battlefield an explosion ripped the sky. The light reminded Simpson of a Fourth of July celebration from his childhood. That was before the revolution, he thought. He doubted another man there could remember the world before the revolution.

His scope was clouded when he first shouldered his rifle. His thumb smeared the moisture around until his sight was at least passable. There were only about ten enemy soldiers remaining, and each was focused intently on the granite embankment shelved some sixty feet below them.

Like wraiths Simpson's fellow soldiers rose at three and nine o'clock to the enemy. When he could discern all six in profile against the fiery battle behind them they moved. It was a massacre. They shot eight of the enemy dead immediately, while two continued to fight. The gunfire from the soldiers across the valley ceased. The wounded waited in desperate silence.

The two remaining enemy were down behind a stone wall, gunning outward wildly. Simpson and his men spread out, reversing the course they had just followed, and creased the distance between themselves and the enemy. A moment later Simpson and a soldier he knew as Wakefield were pressing muzzles to their heads. On the ridge all was, again, silent.

Coyle and another soldier called out across the divide, "We got 'em! We got the bastards!"

An inarticulate cheer went up from the ocean of rubbled granite. Simpson looked down at the shadows in the white stone, and marvelled that they had survived. That had never really been part of his plan.

The soldiers they had captured spoke English. They gave only name, rank, serial number. Wakefield shoved one of them roughly against the shot-up trunk of a silver maple. They watched as he hit the man in the stomach and the face until he was bloody and out of breath.

"They killed my family. They shot them while they slept! I'll kill him with my bare hands!" But Simpson pulled him away.

"You need your hands. The fight's not over yet." Simpson pushed Wakefield to the ground. He went so easily that Simpson knew he couldn't have gone through with it.

Some people just don't have the stomach for killing, he thought.

Simpson took the two prisoners and put them on their knees. His five soldiers stood watching. The prisoner that Wakefield had been beating was laying prone, sobbing. Simpson levelled his rifle, remembered that he needed to lever a round into the chamber and did, then shot the prisoner through the back of his neck.

The prisoner jerked, sunfished a couple of times, and collapsed on his back, gasping for breath. His blood made steamy wet roostertails across Simpson's trousers. The other prisoner cried out.

"You can't do that! It's against the Geneva Convention! You can't just kill us in cold blood."

"Guess it's a good thing I'm a farmer and not a soldier, heh?" asked Simpson.

He shot the prisoner through the right eye and watched him die.

When Simpson turned back to his men he was disappointed. They would not have done what he just had, but he did not care enough about that to say anything.

Simpson slung his rifle over his shoulder, pointed to the four men aside from Coyle, "You better go tend to those wounded boys down there." he said, and rummaged through the enemy's gear until he found a large white case with a red cross on it. He threw the case at Wakefield, who caught it in wet, bloody fingers.

"We've got a bridge to blow." he said to Coyle, and turned to the north, where the bridge lay waiting. He began to walk away.

Coyle followed obediently, hitching his backpack of explosives back up onto his shoulders before pulling a soil covered cape over himself and his pack.

"Dinner At The Revolution" An Excerpt From Bleak Eden

Dinner at the Revolution

copyright Jason Savage 2007

It was nearly three years to the day since the Revolution, and the sun was no brighter, nor the air any warmer, as John Bovian trod home to his wife and three young children. Every day, he reflected, seemed to run headlong into the next, and he was unsure of whether it was his age or the village which seemed to bring this uneasy sense of time slipping and rolling faster each day under the balls of his weary feet. He was a fresh fourty last week, as his wife had just reminded him that morning, and he felt anything but. Annaliese was almost thirty seven, and on most days seemed much fresher than he.

Nearly every man in the small village was working in the munitions factory that had been built the previous year, located centrally between four villages of similar size. Most days John would walk, in his old familiar leather casuals, which had always been the only sort of shoes which felt natural to his feet. They were now the only pair he owned, all the others having been bartered off in exchange for fresh vegetables in the previous winter. On the occasion that the shuttle bus was operating and a seat was found empty John might smile all the way to work, at the oppurtunity to extend the life of those old shoes for one more day. Such was life, for the savoring of small moments.

John figured it for luck, perhaps a bit more, when the local Principal, who was also a Captain in the revolution, had called him into the head office at the factory early that morning;

"Your name Bovian?" the Principal was a thick, dark man, whose black moustache reflected his general appearance and demeanor.

"Why yes, sir, it is." John had been nervous since he had turned the heavy brass doorknob more than a minute before, and entered the silent room to face the Principal, who stared out through the window, deep in thought.

The Principal moved close to him now, so close in fact, that John could smell the remnants of scotch and cigar on his clothes and breath. The former was illegal in the Revolution's Republic, and the latter prohibitively expensive.

"I've heard good things from your supervisor about you." a smile eked out from beneath the moustache, it was contrived and fleeting, but it eased John Bovian nonetheless.

"Yes sir, well thank you, I work hard for the Republic, always have, sir."

"Yes Bovian, I see you do, and I hear that you're an honest and trustworthy citizen."

"I sure am Sir, tune into the weekly address without fail, read from our manual each night to the family, sacrifice daily for the cause, Sir." he managed a meek smile, which seemed more of a nervous twitch than bona fide happiness.

"The reason I've called you in here this morning, Bovian, is that I have requirement for a volunteer household in the coming months."

"Really, sir." John Bovian's response seemed to be more an exhalation than answer or question.

"Yes." the principal paused, then pressed his enormous frame from the desk he had been leaning against, to return to his post at the window. Bovian breathed discreetly.

"You see, Bovian, I have been called away to the front lines of battle, the Revolution needs me."

"Yes sir." John Bovians chest swelled imperceptibly with surrogate patriotism inside his blue checkered flannel shirt.

"I need a family to see after my daughter, Bovian. As you know, I lost my wife in the Revolution, and so as it stands, I am all that my precious daughter Cornelia has, now."

"Yes sir, I know who your daughter is, sir, and we would be overjoyed to host her while you are away, Sir Principal."

"I trust she will be treated with the same nature of respect and dignity which you should afford me, if I were ever a guest in your home?"

"Yes sir, of course, sir. But if you don't mind, sir, I do have one concern I feel I should express in the moment."

"Yes Bovian, quickly, quickly, I have many affairs to see to before I leave tonight."

"Well sir, lately, breads and meats have been quite short, despite the figures of the weekly address, the surplus does not seem to be relieving our local, er, what some have rushed to label a famine, sir." John Bovian paused, his apprehension was apparent as the Principal stared down at him, crooked and thin in the worn leather chair of the handsome office. He should be careful, with these words, one misspoken word, a single overstatement or fallacy of arrogance could land him in a stockade, and opposite the favor he seemed to have found with the Principal.

"I would have a bit of concern, Sir Principal, in regards to maintaining fair portions on the table, sir, until the food stocks improve, at least."

"I am sure Bovian, that you understand the importance of my peace of mind, for my daughter, my only remaining family, while I am fighting for this country, for the revolution?"

"I do sir, I would gladly sacrifice my own meals to ensure such, should it be necessary, or my wifes, or the children for that matter, should the need arise, sir. I was only inquiring on the matter of any special considerations under the circumstances, perhaps even a small bit to help."

The Principal threw his head back to laugh deep and loud with a heartiness only such a well fed man could muster. John Bovian felt the jealousy rise in his gut, and he forced a smile, a nervous, thin facade.

"Bovian, I would not dream of making arrangements to have my Cornelia stay in your home without providing amply for her. She is a growing girl, what kind of father could do such a thing? Would you actually expect such a thing from me, citizen?" the Principals voice had risen contemptously in the midst of his final question, and John Bovian shrank from it, shriveled.

"Of course not, Sir Principal, I don't know what I was thinking, sir, please, please, accept my apology." his words felt weaker than his legs as he shifted them side to side in the chair.

"Citizen Bovian." the principal paused, and removed a thick brown cigar from a case in his left hip pocket, John Bovian was surprised at its similarity to the Principals three fingers and thumb. "So long as my daughter is under your roof and care, your family will recieve double rations, plus an executive dessert on Sundays, she will continue to recieve executive rations all week long, which are not to be shared with your family, understood?"

"Yes sir, yes sir, thats wonderful of you, sir, thank you so much....."

"Yes Bovian, do be on your way now." the principal had intersected his spineless gratitude. "Cornelia will require a bedroom of her own, and adequate dining accomodations, apart from your family, I trust that if you leave the factory now, you will be prepared for her arrival after dinner tonight?"

"Yes sir." John Bovian rose, his right arm twitched in a desire to salute the stone like officer in his fore, it was wholly inappropriate for a citizen to do so.

The principal's eyes never left the window and the barren brown tundra below it , "Do enjoy those Executive desserts, Citizen Bovian, and remember, my Cornelia will not hesitate to report any misdeed immediately upon my return."

"We will not disappoint you, Sir Principal."

"Dismissed, Citizen."

"Yessir."

John Bovian trembled and brimmed with joy on his breezy, frost kissed walk home. The fragmented pavement fell away under his thin soles, and soon he was forsaking his cobblestone walkway and shortcutting the lawn to the front door of his small house. As John Bovian entered the front door, flushed with his lungs full and his eyes wide, his wife turned to him from the kitchen, and the three children, a small dark haired boy and two identical blue eyed, ringlet tangled girls, who rounded out the family.

"John, what's going on, why're you home so early? Is everything alright?" Annaliese had turned away from the children and stood with a towel hanging loosely from her left hand, the towel floated to the floor in anticipation of his answer.

"No, no dear. Nothing's wrong, matter of fact, I've some exciting news for you. It'll require some work today, but is should pay off long-term, might even be our break out of this goddamned common citizenry."

"What is it John?" Annaliese exhaled a smile, which grew as it mirrored his expression.

John Bovian recounted the story to his wife as they cleaned the children from their lunch time layers of oily government issue peanut butter, and pasty white flake bread. The children, at least for now, seldom refused the less than savory repitition of the lunch. John Bovian always told himself it was because they wore more than they ate. He would never admit that any human, especially his own offspring, could enjoy such rubbish.

John and Annaliese worked through the afternoon, while young Andrew, his son, and the twins, Norma and Mary Ellen, played downstairs, fenced inside the front parlor. The girls had recieved lucid directions to call out should little Andrew decide to partake of the loose threads which were quickly rolling and snagging from the parlor rug, with no hope for replacement in sight. By dinner the partially finished attic had been refurbished into perhaps the nicest living quarters on the block, with John and Annaliese each sacrificing several personal items to complete the transformation. The last touches were completed just as the couple heard a car pull in the drive and stop. John straightened the brass mantel clock, inherited from his grandfather, which now was a bedside piece for the guest, and Annaliese fingered a streak of dust from a gold gilt mirror which had only hours before hung before her vanity chair in the couple's small bedroom.

The Principal examined the habitat with remote approval before allowing his daughter, a portly girl of seventeen named Cornelia to enter. The Principal said very little, apart from a fleeting compliment to the comeliness of the twin girls, and a stern warning aside for John Bovian. He checked and restraightened his red wool coat, trimmed in black and heavy with the silver bars of the Revolution. The officers uniform was complete with the gold cross on the left shoulder, crescent blade on the right. They might have been freshly added, as the Principal displayed some concern that they were straight, but perhaps not level. In just minutes he was gone with his entourage, and Cornelia was silently ascending the stairs to her untried quarters.

The Bovians let the night pass without burden, in tacit understanding of the circumstance of the teenager now residing over them. The children went to sleep easily that night, without fuss or complaint, and the warmth between John Bovian and his wife seemed softer and sweeter than it had felt for months. The last words Annaliese spoke to John that night, before they drifted away, were in reference to the meal of the following day, followed by a vaguery on seizing oppurtunities.

The war continued on for weeks, but food was plentiful, and the work at the munitions factory, while heavy, was high spirited and swollen with purpose. John Bovian enjoyed a single promotion, soon after the war began, which took him off the line, and removed him from the always ominous possibility of a disfiguring accident.

The grumblings about the factory and villages were that the citizen rations had been cut again, to nearly half what they were. Some men said they could not survive on the new rations. John Bovian did not tell a soul of the extra beef and fresh potatoes, coconut chocolate cake and two bottles of milk that were delivered to his home the previous afternoon. He did spend some time that day, in his new office on the third floor of the factory, regarding ways which he might share his families good fortune with the others. It seemed there was no safe manner to do so which was not sure to bring beggars to his back door each evening.

Cornelia spent most days in her lofty private quarters, but occasionally found her way down in the evening, where she enjoyed reading to the children, or might help Annaliese with the dishes. One evening, when Cornelia had laboriously scaled the stairway for the evening, Annaliese whispered to John, "I'm worried about the girl, did you notice her pants, John?"

"Of course not. What'd I be thinking, to be staring at her pants?" he was curiously offended by the question.

"Not that, John, you dunder-head." Annaliese rolled her eyes."She can't button them any more, any of them."

They were cleaning the kitchen now. Winter had swept into the village. Cold daggers rode through on every draft in the home. Firewood was scarce, and the electricity was uncertain. There had been a rumor at the factory the previous week of oil tankers en route, enough diesel to fill every tank in the four villages, but it had not materialized. Later in the week another rumor, of a missile attack on the supply chain, had chased the last hope of such warmth away. Now they washed dishes in cold water, with hands so cold they felt brittle, and frightfully numb.

"Perhaps she could go out, in the daytimes, and get some exercise." John Bovian studied the wall opposite his wife during the suggestion.

"Oh sure John, let the wife offend the Principals daughter, call her fat and all. I will do no such thing." Annaliese slammed a dish down on the counter with a sudden force that brought John to worry she would wake the children.

"There are worse things to be right now, than fat." John Bovian toothed the words to his disapproving wife

"No, no. We'll just let her get fatter and fatter, soon she won't fit down the stairway." Annaliese paused, fingering her wash rag apprehensively. "Poor girl, she is quite friendly, spends some time with the children during the day. Sometimes though...." Annaliese trailed off as she stared out the single paned window. The back yard was pitch black, framed by the chipped paint edge of the window and frost crystals in a starburst pattern within it.

"Sometimes her eyes just turn dark, and she floats away to her room." she blurted the sentence, as though she were ashamed to notice. As if emotion were forbidden or simply not apportioned to her common class. "Must be so hard, with only her father left."

The conversation was complete. It was spoken and could no longer be avoided, nor could it be remedied. Minutes after they had turned down the last lamp, as John and Annaliese lay close and warming, Cornelias sobbing fell all too woefully upon compassionate ears. Annaliese left the warmth of the small bed and drifted across the cold floor of the house, then up the staircase. John watched her first as a phantasm then as a faint glow through the open bedroom door, until she was gone. Annaliese would not return to bed until early that morning; a line had been crossed, a wall toppled and a monument to pity erected.


* * * * * *


War became more than an export at the munitions factory the following day. John Bovian had just finished a supervisory scan of the assembly floor, through his wide office window, when a skyborne whine ripped a path through the humming factory. He ran back to his window to see one of his men opened just above the left hip, his right hip becoming little more than a flesh and bone hinge. The man was wide eyed, his mouth expressing terminal disbelief as he attempted to capture his intestines, slippery as a string of greasy blood sausage, unfurling to slide and slap down his leg. Six men were dead, dozens were wounded. The Imperialists were real.

More bombs would follow, the radio station, the Executive Building, the bridge across the ravine. The silence that followed each grew in power and scope. After dinner, home-bound conversations across the set of humble villages shifted ominously to the ordeal, to what could be shared, and what would. There was one last whine, that terrible evening, at just dark, but then there was light. The sky over the food bank lit gold in a sparkling triple burst against the shimmer of the white snow. Nature's beauty, it seemed, was all that remained of elegance. It was now a lonely backdrop to their ugly peasant lives.

John and Annaliese Bovian watched the fire from the front steps. The flicker on the horizon prodded his desperation, teasing and tickling the the bottom of his stomach even as he tucked the children in, his eyes full of frightened tears.

An hour later the men of the neighborhood, and several women, gathered around the corner from the Bovian's, on a lawn where the snow was blown thin. There was no food. Perhaps a potato or two here, a few slices of bread or a half stick of butter, but no sustenance. All the food that the villages possessed was but smoke in the dark sky now. The men made a plan to begin a hunt at dawn, all men with rifles must attend, those without would go to the food bank, on a salvage operation, if possible. John Bovian had a rifle, but it needed oil and care. He left the barren lawn before the others, to begin.

Cornelia and Anneliese sat up with John, and partook of the smell of iron and walnut and oil as he cleaned and recleaned his rifle. The stove was low of wood, and John went to the shed slowly, with the old iron hatchet.
That old hatchet, older and tougher than he. John smiled to himself. It was sharper too.

The wood shed was empty, he already knew. He used back side of the hatchet to punch several thick pine boards clean from the back wall and onto the white ground behind the shed. He scooped them up, clutched them at his chest and stood upright with a labored grunt. A minute later the wood satiated the chill of the house. A faint vapor of paint tinted the odor. In the kitchen, Annaliese and Cornelia were drooping with fatigue as the sun rose, and he stepped into a brilliant white morning so crisp and thin that he struggled to inhale. A wisp of black vapor tickled the blue horizon. Three miles away the crack of a rifle violated the serenity. The neighborhood men were gathered in the street, each squinting in the direction of the sound.

They hunted until noon. John's feet were so cold that they curled and writhed in pain, then went numb. As he waddled home and up the walk, he imagined himself in shackles, but instead of dragging the balls behind his feet he stood on them, struggling to balance as well as overcome the weight. It was awkward, and embarassing for the children to see him in such discomfort, but he would not tell them to look away.

Annaliese fetched more firewood from the back wall of the wood shed, and set to warm her shaking breadwinner. John Bovian felt blue in dimensions. The children ate a small breakfast of oatmeal and water. Cornelia stood in the front window, patiently, until she was sure her food would not arrive. Her eyes expressed no emotion as she passed Annaliese to the staircase. Her arms slacked as if she were lugging heavy weights as she climbed the stairs, shoulders soft and defeated.

When the children were down for their nap and Cornelia in her room, John and Annaliese commenced the solemn discussion of what was, and what must be;

"The factory is out, totally, no power. There's a gaping hole in the roof, crater in the floor. Even with a supply truck coming in every day, it'd be six months before we could fix it. The soldiers haven't picked up a load of shells for a month."

"What about the food bank? Is their anything left that can be saved, rationed, anything John?"

"They say it was a total loss, but I'd imagine that if anything did survive its being hoarded by another village. It's every neighborhood for itself, from what they're saying out there."

"Well." Annaliese stood and hopscotched across the small kitchen, from one thin dirty rug to another, trying to keep her bare feet from the cold of the floor. She knelt and opened the door under the sink, "I've managed to squirrel away a few days worth of dried goods and grains, just in case."

Annaliese returned to the table where John sat, quietly as he nodded and stared out the window at nothing but white. She sat again. "How long do they figure it'll be before the bridge gets repaired? Is there another way around?" Her tone suggested that she still did not grasp the severity of the situation.

He shook his head slowly, thought things through before answering. His eyes blinked with a long pause and he swallowed. "Can't fix the bridge until spring, and nobody can cross the ravine until the ice and snow melts down to at least half what it is now."

"What're we gonna do? The kids won't last long on what we have, how're you going to keep your strength up-and mine-if they're to survive. And what about Cornelia?"

"Cornelia? Cornelia?" her very name sparked rage within him. She was this Revolution embodied. Everything that was corrupt, its glorious hypocrisies, its gluttony. "Worry about your own goddamned kids, Annaliese, to hell with her, to hell with her and all the other hellspawn of the goddamned revolution! To hell with them all!"

"I'm sorry honey, I thought you wanted to help the cause, to raise the Revolution up-"

"This fucking Revolution was never for us, Annaliese. It was for them, for their wars. For their bombs and guns and jackets and medals."

"But what about the pride of freedom, the gift-"

"There is no freedom Annaliese, and we're the goddamned gift, we're the spoils, the slaves. They fight for our mastership, to hold tight the whips of our bondage."

"So we starve? Is that it. We just sit here and starve, and hope our masters will drop some crumbs on their piteous beasts? Is that what our children are, John Bovian, just beasts, cattle for the Revolution? I will not accept it, never, and I will deny you the same, husband. You will find a way, John, you must make this family more than commodity, more than a body of slaves."

"We'll hunt again tonight, but some of the men say that the food ministry over-harvested this fall, that there might be nothing left."

The fire was warm and John Bovian felt flushed. He fell asleep in the bedroom through the afternoon, hiding from his hunger in the dreams. He woke several times and let his mind dance among the happy sounds of the children, who were playing in the main room down the hall. He rose just before dark, when a rapping on the front door required his attention. It was a clerk from the Principals office, he did not carry the black insulated flat bag full of food he had so often delivered. He requested Cornelia with the corners of his mouth quivering, and bit his lip before John Bovian turned to call to her. The cold wind cut through the open doorway, but the clerk would not step in. The landscape behind him turned to blue in the dusk, as if it was asphyxiating from the scarcity of air.

A radio transmission that morning had brought the grave news; the Principal had been killed in a surprise raid by the imperialist commandos. His body displayed on television halfway round the world. The clerk relayed it all from a surprisingly blunt, almost emotionless angle.

Cornelia retreated to her room, almost falling over Andrew as she stumbled with runny eyes. Annaliese did not chase her. The front door closed a moment later, and the heat from the stove gained leverage in its battle with the cold.

"I'll leave her be for a while. Must be horrific, though, she's got nobody left." Annaliese searched her husband for an answer, and shrugged anxiously when she found none.

"Just leave her be unless she calls you, Annaliese, and pray for this hunt." He kissed her once on the lips, and let the kiss slide down her neck, resting at her collar, for thee full breaths. His eyes focused before he stepped away. John Bovian carried his rifle out the back door, to evade the children with the sight of the gun. Most of the men were already waiting, it would be ten more minutes before they left.

* * * * * *

Eight men drove a white-tail deer to within feet of the menacing ravine that night. John Bovian trained his sights at just behind the front leg of the deer and squeezed the trigger in melody to three other men. The beast ran ten yards before it fell, even closer to the edge. The men were ecstatic. The crimson spread wild in the grainy white ice, refusing to commit to a single path.

One man produced a steel blade, affixed to a brown, bony handle. The blade glinted with a life that valued death above all. It sang treacherously in the moonlight against the ashen background. The blade was passed, once, twice, through unsure hands, before it found its mate. The man who deserved the blade knelt and began to gut the deer. The slurp and gurgle that was at once a beginning and an end fashioned the background of a rising conversation.

"Doesn't really matter who made the kill shot, does it? We're still gonna split it even." Mark Albertson was smiling with his ever present arrogance. John Bovian thought it was a miracle that the man had survived as a citizen for the last three years, given his attitude.

Several men agreed to the comment, John Bovian stood silently, looking down at the man with the blade.

"You like watching people work, don't you Bovian?" Mark Albertson again, same smile, more arrogance. He was a large man, much larger than John Bovian, and still in possession of his shotgun. John Bovian's was leaning against the trunk of a solid pine twenty feet away.

"I watch when I'm to watch, work when I'm to work. Just try to do my part." His response was a straight monotone, the same way he'd spoken to Albertson at the factory when the arrogant bastard worked under him.

"To watch when we're to starve, you mean, Bovian?" As Mark Albertsons voice rose, two of the men shouldered through the crowd to put some distance between themselves and Albertson.

"Something bothering you, Mark?" He thought to keep his cool, at least until his meat was cut.

"Yeah, Bovian, you sneaky, ass kissing bastard. My son's almost starved to death, my wife's hardly strong enough to put wood in the stove when I'm gone."

"Things are tough all around, Mark. What do you want me to do? I came out here, I pitched in." John Bovian sensed a tilt in the mood, suddenly anger and sympathy were out of balance.

"Are they, Bovian? How are those Executive desserts, big thick cakes and cherry pies, double rations John, how are they? Did you think we hadn't heard?"

"So what was I supposed to do, Mark, feed my family or yours? Give away our only chance? Deny my family?"

"Doesn't really matter what you should have done now, Bovian. What matters now is what you did." Mark Albertson lifted his thick pump shotgun at that moment, turned to the pine tree leaning post of John Bovians rifle and fired three rounds into the night. John Bovian screamed in muted terror, as no scream could suffice, when he read the formula behind the action.

"Go home, Bovian, and enjoy those Executive Desserts, I hope they were worth it." the smile had still not left Albertson's mouth, it might have grown.

"But-I've got kids too, come on you guys, you can't let us starve down there." He was frantic, and now his nose was running, he fell to his knees from the stunned pose he'd struck.

"You would have let all of us starve, Bovian. To hell with you, you made your choice when you didn't offer to help us. Go home Bovian, and go to hell. They're goddamned close to the same I bet, just about now." Mark Albertson was laughing now, his voice bouncing like a coyote's howl off the sheer slate walls of the ravine. John Bovian turned away broken, shamed, snot-nosed.

He stumbled down through the thicker snow they had avoided on the way up. Just before his profile blended into the profile of the thicker trees below the men, the man with the blade stood, and tossed his last handful of gore off the edge. He called down the hill, behind Bovian, with his crooked, yellow smile.

"Hope you still got some o' them desserts laying around, you greedy bastard!"

Five of the men laughed but the two who had broken away did not and hung their heads. By sunrise each of the men had returned to his family with a fair portion of the venison. The white tail lay skeletal, atop the ravine, frozen, mocking.

John Bovian would not return as a scavenger. He told Annaliese that the hunt was unsuccesful, and laid down in the bedroom.

The hunt was unsuccesful. It was true. John Bovian closed his eyes and crossed to tormented dreams.

The children ate sufficiently that day, Annaliese was under the impression that the hunts would soon prove fruitful, which they would not. Late in the day Annaliese noticed the absence of her husband's rifle. He came into the kitchen just moments later. His eyes were softened and sad and she couldn't bear to ask. She handed him a mug of hot coffee.

"Enjoy that honey, it's the last of the coffee until a food drop comes along." she tried to shine a positive light.

John Bovian nodded, but did not speak. Annaliese continued to talk, John Bovian continued to listen, to disagree silently if only to permit hope. They were dying slowly.

Cornelia played with the children on a blanket near the wood stove. The floor was frigid, almost dangerous with cold. The back wall of the shed was almost gone. Annaliese continued to slaver hope. John Bovian began to measure the children against the size of Cornelia's limbs. The twins were half each the size of her thigh, left or right, or one ass cheek in the fetal position. Little Andrew was no larger than her upper arm, maybe just past the elbow. A morsel of Annaliese's hope a'la carte caught his attention as it sped through the kitchen - "Well, at least Cornelia'll be able to fit into her pants again soon."

John Bovian stood and turned to look at his wife. The bare floor so cold on his feet that it burned. His eyes burned also, with contempt for his pale wife, for what she'd just said, and what it meant to him.

John Bovian returned to bed, but he would not sleep, not now. The hunger in his stomach grew for hours, gassy spears twisting into his innards. He had been two days without eating, nearly three. The agonizing, taunting pain in his stomach was what Andrew and the twins would feel in just days. It was only a fraction of what Annaliese would endure to sustain the children, at all costs. Would he let it happen? Was there another way? Could he admit it to himself? John Bovian closed his eyes and retreated to a place in his mind that most men never visit, which a sane men could never admit exists.

He stayed there a long time. The hunger was powerful, but his will to survive did prevail. He'd fought a battle to ensure his family would not need to fight. If he succeeded, it meant survival, little more. Survival was all he wanted- needed-until spring. Not approval or acceptance, not even sanity. He would sacrifice it all to keep his family breathing. His stomach growled again, and he imagined a great mouth in his gut, gulping and belching acidic air, the same way a tree inhales gases and exhales oxygen. His stomach began to feel bloated, a blistering irony for its emptiness.

When Annaliese Bovian had put the children down and kissed Cornelia good night on the forehead, she rolled into the cool bed next to John. He was staring at a crack in the ceiling, his heart was pounding, his pulse visible through a scraggle of dark whiskers. A bead of sweat tickled his hairline. Annaliese did not notice, in her false suggestive euphoria.

"So, when are you going out again, to hunt." her face still glowed with hope. John Bovian turned to look and to swim in her eyes. She had no hint to what her hope had brought him. He turned away.

"Tonight, late. I'm almost ready now."

Annaliese turned back the oil lamp. The house soon assumed an appropriate shade of reddened brown. The impression was, at least in appearance, warm.

It took John Bovian an hour more to rise from the bed. The fire was almost out, the house rattled from a gust of wind against its south wall. He shivered. He finished off the back wall of the wood shed, stripping it with the hatchet.
He returned to the house, left the hatchet in the snow on the floor of the wood shed. It was snow that had blown in fresh that filled the empty space. The pine boards satisfied the wood stove, the house began to warm, it would do for now. He bundled himself with a scarf and an extra layer of clothing, the wind outside was biting cold.

A simple walk. As John Bovian passed the wood shed his gloved hands found the hatchet in the lighlyt powdered snow. The house was behind him then, and the wind was strong. It gusted strong and wide once more. A sharp edge cut into his lungs as he gorged himself on the thin air. He stopped and bent at the waist to regroup.

The small village was graydark, tiny candles eked weak tips out from a few frost settled windows.

He walked to the end of the street, toward the only fork in the road. John Bovian wavered then, at the choice, and let a single wind blow him to the right, up the hill. The ravine was up the hill, a footpath past three more shacks, the fresh snow was unbroken white, rolling drifts.

Sweat was forming on his lower back, his wool shirt was beginning to itch in chicken scratches on his back. He stopped at the base of the footpath, it was unpassable. He stared up the dark evergreen tunnel, the wind challenged him to climb. He could not. He recalled the shock of the hunt, of the men who would let his family starve. The sound of the knife in flesh, the smell of life and hope in the aroma of the fresh blood and the fading spice of burnt gunpowder. Then the scalding venom of Mark Albertsons words. The betrayal was certainly stark in its existence, but who had truly transgressed? He could not doubt himself for the moment, and he turned away from the sight in his mind, as he had turned from the men and the kill.

He could do it. He'd found what they had in abandoning his family that night. He returned through the snow in the same narrow path he'd carved moments before. The wind had begun to cover it, filling in and softening the jagged edges. He returned to the intersection, and looked to Mark Albertson's house on a sharp hill, in a sliver of moonlight. The landscape was so clear and pale and fragile under the moon. A painting of morbid glass. He gripped the hatchet tightly, as though he might smash the scene, like a window. Yes, like a window, that blocked his view to a warm place.

John Bovian shuffled past Mark Albertson's house. It was slightly larger than his, more square and better looking. For a brief moment he thought he'd seen a sharp movement in the window. The back of his hand felt paralyzed in the cold, in contrast to the sweaty palm, soaking his knitted wool mitten. He spat a huge throaty yellow clump into the snow, and moved on.

His home was in the distance. There were three more houses between them. His blood plummeted downward. He gulped for breath, the gale denied his lungs. His senses were surreal. The cold was something more now, an urge. A bead of sweat runneled the skin of his spine, it was torment. The wooly itch increased violently down his back. His legs and feet tingled, and both his ears throbbed. The houses passed quickly by, as he floated, entranced, mouth agape. He might hide behind this face, he thought, as he imagined himself, jaw cocked, pupils taken.

The warm air of the fresh fire greeted John Bovian as he returned through the back door. The familiar scents rushed in, slightly unclean, a sliver of pungence passed his nostrils by. He threw off the mittens, his overcoat and scarf, his leather shoes, dark and wet. John Bovian wiggled his toes and scratched his back nervously, it made his heart race. He shook his head and blinked hard. The sweat poured, racing across his skin. He wiped his palms on his long johns hard, over and over, and grabbed the old wooden handle of the hatchet.

The staircase whimpered under his feet, the door brushed silently through its arc as he stepped through.

Utter silence was intersected by the sharp southern wind. In the shadows John Bovian lifted the brass mantle clock from the bedside table. He walked softly across the room, bent slowly and laid it next to the open door.

Her eyes were open when he turned back.

The pitch of his voice was too high when he spoke his rehearsed words. The words he knew he'd speak, no matter the pains he'd taken to avoid them, squeaked...trembled from deep within him. From that dark place he'd explored just once.

"Starvation is a lonely idol, Cornelia. My family will not worship at its feet. I have only this choice."

His hand went numb as he swung the hatchet once. John Bovian hid behind that face, that blank dumb trance, until her last breath, a sliver of air whistling past the sharpe edge of the weapon. Her eyes fixed upon him.

He remembered the white-tail deer. That smell, the fresh kill.

John Bovian turned away, resisting the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the sweet relief; the hunt was complete, they would survive the famine. The Revolution was over.