Fiction: Brothers in War

“So which way now, down Catastrophe Road or Doom Avenue?”

I shake my head, trying to clear my mind; I take a look down both streets, scanning the quaint little houses with red roofs. Cute  dwellings  line the mud-brown streets, trash cans and fallen sign posts litter the roads. I squint into the distance, trying to discern which directions to take.

“How about Doom Avenue, Jules? I feel like a walk through extremist town” I mutter. Jules walks up to stand beside me, one foot on top of a short brick wall. He shades his eyes and peers down the street, holding his rifle in the other hand. I take a look at him and almost bleat out an amused chuckle. The kid looks ridiculous, short blonde hair peeking out of his ever-wobbly metal helmet, dark green camouflage uniform fitting far too big for him. He’s a loyal soldier and a good friend to me. We’ve grown a lot since we got to Seljuk, and with the stress we’re under, soldiers can’t help but to hang on to other soldiers.

“Are you sure about this, Athy?” Jules asks with a questioning glance my way, I nod; there isn’t much choice from where I’m standing.

“We don’t have much choice, Jules we have to find a way back to the police station, whether we go down this road or somewhere else, we’re going.” Jules frowns, then gives an accepting shrug.

“All right man, it’s your call.” He sighs.

“What, you don’t trust me?” My cheeky grin brings out a smile from Jules, and he shakes his head.

“I’ll never trust your ideas Athy, you’ll get me killed one day.”

“Ooh will that day get here any sooner?” I croon, staring down the street and scanning for any sign of movement

“Let’s get moving Jules. Uric, you’re on point!” Our scout Uric emerges from the hedges to our left like a ghost  from the fog of some horror movie. He's dressed in camouflaged netting draped over his shoulder, his rifle cartridges taped to every foreseeable place on his body. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does he send chills down my spine; he’s got a voice that makes deadly disease sound merciful.

Uric starts moving through the front yards of the houses to our left, and the rest of the squad follows behind him. We vault over hedgerows and slide alongside the bleached white walls of shallow houses. The thunder of artillery pounds the ground in a distant battle, making the ground quake softly with every little step. Shots ring out and columns of black smoke reach up from distant fires to cloud the hot orange sky, lit by a setting sun.

Uric crouches down low and moves out to the sidewalk, behind a fallen garbage pail and peering down the street, his rifle leveled and steady before him. With a quick wave  he motions for all of us to stop, and we drop to the ground in a crouch simultaneously, waiting for Uric’s word. Tense minutes pass as I try to peek around a hedgerow to see what Uric is seeing down the street, but I can’t make anything out in that endless avenue of small white houses, with their phones lines fallen and in tangled messes all down the street.

Then after a minute of anxiously waiting for a reply, Uric turns around and picks me out amongst the soldiers of our squad. He holds up four fingers and points up the road. I quietly step up past the hedgerow in front of me, and walk up behind Uric, trying to pick out the targets he has identified.

There they are;  a couple of sandbag stacks give them away, a squad of four plus extremist soldiers, one of them manning a fixed machine gun position behind his wall of sandbags. They’re dug in behind a  maze of fallen telephone poles, some of the wires still sparking. If we were to walk up that road the extremists would gun us down in a heartbeat, so we need a way to remove them.

We have one advantage; they haven’t spotted us. If we keep concealed, we will be able to strike first and maybe take out the machine gun before they  have a chance to use it. Jules sprints to my side, and taps me on the shoulder to get my attention.

“What do we have?” He hisses to me, his rifle close to his chest.

“Four extremists behind sandbags, they’ve got a fixed machine gun too.” I peer around the corner, trying to judge how far away they are.

“Should we call in an airstrike?” Jules whispers.

“There’s no point in calling in an airstrike on so small a position. Besides, a couple of Ferakur-20’s flying overheard is only going to attract more extremists to our area, we’ll be surrounded before too long.”

I  scan the houses on either side of the road and look for an easy access point to the backyards of each street. On the side we occupy, there is a small white gate, which some of our squad could use to attack the enemy position from their flank. But the other side of the street is not so easily accessible. Any quick movements could be spotted by the extremists, who would immediately open fire. Even at the range we are right now, that machine gun could be fatal.

I point out an open screen door to a garage on the other side of the road to Jules, who follows my eyes.

“Jules, I need you to take Winslow and Benjamin, and head for that door. Get to the backyard of that house, once you’re there, move up the street through the backyards, and we’ll hit the enemy position together, okay?”  Jules nods in agreement and gives me a smile that seems almost fatalistic.

“Is this the day you get me killed Athy?” I smile back, unsure about how to answer his question.

“No way man, we’re brothers and we’ll get past this one all right? Get your team together and move out.”

 I pat Jules on the shoulder as he motions for two of his fellow soldiers to follow him. All three drop to their bellies, and begin to crawl across the open street, trying to stay concealed behind a fallen lamp post. After a few tense moments, all three are across and the enemy sentries are none the wiser, still slouching around.

Jules and his team make their way to the open garage door and slip inside. Once they disappear from my sight, I bring close two other soldiers, and tell them to use the white gate to get to the backyards on the other side of the street. Once both are in position and moving silently up either side, I gather the rest of the squad, and prepare for the frontal assault.

Uric is with me, and I can see the surprise on his face as I tell him our plan. Our team is to move up the center of the road, hit the enemy from the front, and act as the distraction to keep the enemy occupied, while our flanking forces take them out. With a nearly inaudible sigh, the always silent Uric agrees with me, while the other soldiers are not so easily swayed. Their worried looks have me concerned that they will not be as competent as I will need them to be.

“Look, we’ll take cover behind the stone walls just up the street. Once we have their fire focused on us, our teams will move in, pop, pop, pop, down go the extremists.” I show them a low stone wall in front of a house, which could serve as  cover. But once we are in the open sights of the extremists, there isn’t much that could save us from becoming ground beef. Nevertheless, my plan reassures the two soldiers, and we get ready to move out.

 I sprint around the hedgerow, winding my way around the front yard of a house, the short stone wall within sight. Uric and the others follow closely behind me, the rustle of their gear seeming to echo in the empty street. Moving so fast, I cannot see how the extremists are reacting. But when a tuft of grass comes flying out of the ground with a loud pop, I realize that the game is up. Several shots are fired  as we sprint through front yards and hedges, the fixed machine gun trying to pick us off from a distance. Suddenly I feel like a madman; the closer we get to that gun, the better the chance of it hitting us.

The bullets are really flying now, and I can feel a buzz as one  narrowly misses my head. With a desperate yell I leap into the air, and tuck into a roll, the stone wall just a few metres ahead of me. I hit the ground with a thud, rolling head first into the wall; Uric and the other two soldiers close behind. They duck behind the wall as well, bullets chipping the edges of the bricks as the machine gun pumps out round after round at us. The sound is deafening as puffs of concrete smoke and bits of rock rain down on our heads from the top of the wall. With a roar I raise my rifle and stand up, firing in the general direction of the enemy blockade. I cannot see where I am firing really, but my sudden attack has silenced them momentarily, as the extremists duck for cover behind their sandbags. My squad joins in, and we pour fire on them, until even the machine gunner ducks behind his sandbag cover to get away from our brutal assault.

Above our own firing we cannot hear the sound of our flanking teams, moving silently on either side of the enemy position. Suddenly there is a burst of fire from either side of the street, first from the right and then the left. The extremists yell out in confusion, frightened by the unexpected attack. Within seconds, our flanking forces move out into the road, driven forward to make the kill on the pinned enemy. Uric, the two soldiers and I watch, as Jules and his teams move in close, their rifles flashing, and pepper the helpless extremists with gunfire. A long, horrible scream goes out through the street before Jule's gun fires again. The entire road falls silent once again, as Uric and I emerge cautiously from behind the stone wall.

I approach Jules, who stands above the slaughtered extremists, his face solemn and his rifle at his side. His shoulders droop with exhaustion, and his breath comes heavy and loud. With quick bounding steps I run up to him and pat him hard on the shoulder. The other soldiers quickly occupy defensive positions on the sandbags and one takes a position on the machine gun.

“Good work Jules; that could have been my last battle.” I remark with a smile. Jules does not smile back, but stares with dark eyes at the smoking bodies at his feet, as the soldiers clear them away from the sandbags.

“It sure was their last” He mumbles.

“Hey, it’s either them or us right? We could’ve taken a stroll down this road and they would have filled us full of funny holes huh? It’s the job, we do it.” I frown down at Jules, whose expression does not change, his sorrowful eyes still following the dead soldiers as they are dragged to the side of the road. Uric begins searching one of the bodies, and pulls out of his pocket a small red wallet.

“See, Uric doesn’t mind dead bodies; you should be more like Uric!” I laugh. Uric pays no attention and rifles through his new wallet with a bored look on his face. I walk slowly over to the edge of the sandbags, and lean up against them, satisfied with our good work. Jules walks up behind me, and set his gun down on the edge of the sandbag, a long sigh erupting from his parched throat.

“The day I start acting like Uric, please take me out of the army.”