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.