Death On Death

A petrol sheen glimmered on the water’s surface, where all the ripples of my units passage through the dead swamp had long since dissipated. It was deep as my calves, but like most water it was such a murky, toxic brown I couldn’t see the bottom. It stank more than most, though, like ammonia and chlorine.

I lay, obscured in the skeletal branches of a long dead tree, looking down the sight of my rifle. I could feel the sharp shapes of my spare magazines digging into my chest, as wrinkles formed on my sodden feet which floated in the water behind me.

But I didn’t move.

I faced the setting sun. It looked red through the ever-present smog in the air and made the tree corpses all around look like dead coral. Rough, faded. Pinky orange red.

In the middle distance, on the edge of the swamp, smoke rose from a building we made mostly rubble today.

I had to squint through the red glare, but I knew I faced the right way.

We were all facing the right way, at the right time. But for all the wrong reasons.

I saw a ripple flash its way along the waters surface, then another and another, until it churned on a microscale and made the petrol sheen dance rainbows in the dying sunlight.

Sounds came next. Muffled voices and sloshing steps that seemed to come from all around me.

Yet I knew I faced the right way. That terrible way.

I knew my unit was fanned out to my right in a wide cupped, line with myself on the left most tip. They were hidden in the murky water and gnarled tangles of the dead swamp, ready to kill. Ready to stack death on death, and call it a day.

Finally, I saw movement between the trees. A flash of clothing. The flicker of metal reflecting red sunlight. Bright, in the fast deepening darkness where shadows lengthened by the second; creeping corpse fingers ready to claim their own.

Someone yelled, and the firing began, cracking through the stillness of the swamp.

I fired my rifle into the haze and thunder before me. I wiggled my barrel from side to side as I shot, not knowing if I was hitting my targets. Not knowing if I wanted to. Again and again and again, until all my clips were empty and an eerie silence slowly crept its way back over the swamp.

My ears rang, my heart pounded, though I’d barely moved. My eyes swiveled, searching for my unit in their positions. I didn’t know what happened next. No one told me how these things go.

“Hold!” my Commander yelled out. Sometimes it was a relief to be told what to do. Nothing moved for long moments. “Advance!”

I saw my unit emerge from their cover. Rough men in tattered uniforms, rifles trained on our targets. They knew what way to face.

I imitated them the best I could. The raised rifle felt heavy in my arms, the metal warm against my cheek from my heavy breathing as I watched for movement. My foot slipped on a slimy tree branch and I flinched.

Slosh, slosh, slosh. The sound of our steps as we approached the targets. The enemies. But we didn’t use that word. Too personal, they said.

A tree finally blocked the sun’s red glare, and I saw what we were there to do. What we had done. What it meant to face the right way.

People- No. Targets. Targets lay scattered this way and that, floating in the water or draped over logs. Their blood looked black in the fading light and made the water run a deeper shade of toxic brown. They were dressed in little more than rags, still clutching crude weapons in cold fingers. Or bottles and pouches of the clean water they had taken from the Company. Stolen. They stole it. We owned the clean water, and they tried to steal it. That’s what made them targets. I had to remember that.

Around me, my unit checked the targets, body by body, to make sure they we terminated and collect the stolen water. One male target sprung up from where he pretended to be a body and tried to run. Six rifles spoke and spelled his doom. There was a splash as the swamp claimed him.

I froze as it happened, then looked around with wide eyes.

“Get to work, kid.” One of my unit said. He knelt over another male, older, who’s eyes swivelled to look at me. Like a fish on the chopping block. My companion opened his throat, which bulged out like synth-tomato paste in tight, sliced packaging. Gooey, red. Clumpy.

I felt bile in my throat and turned away. I tried to turn from death, but death was all around.

“Get to work!” Someone shouted at me. I stumbled over to an unchecked body and knelt in the water. Just like my training told me to. It was dark now, the sun only a whisper of red above the horizon. I clicked on my chest-torch.

The body flinched in the sudden light. A female. Younger than me. Gritty muck from the water dotted her face, blending in with her freckles.

“Please…” The target whispered. She held a hand to her stomach where blood and bile slowly seeped through her fingers. It was red, fading to the black of the swamp like the sky above us. I met the girl’s eyes. I didn’t know what to do. The target. The target.

“This ones’ alive.” I said by rote, the training again, to my unit in general. She cringed and shook her head feebly.

“Terminate it?” Someone said. As though they weren’t sure why they needed to say it.

“I…”

“Terminate it.” Someone else said, more harshly.

My mind raced.

“Section 8.2.24.” I said, reciting from memory. Company training again. “All targets neutralised are to be taken into custody and give medical assistance…” I trailed off as my Commander emerged from the darkness. My hand went to my breast where I knelt in the Company salute. I opened my mouth to speak-

“Good memory.” He said. I could see his straight, white teeth in the darkness. He towered over me. “But all targets were terminated, today.”

“She-”

The Commander grabbed my hair, rough, and turned my head to stare at the target. She looked scared. I was scared too. He put his boot on her chest and forced her body under the murky water. She struggled, thrashed uselessly, as bubbles rose from her mouth with screams muffled by the water forcing its way into her lungs.

My torch-light pierced the water to reach the targets face. The murk made her skin look a greeny brown. Like an alien. A monster. An animal from some deep, dark place no one would ever want to go that nobody would ever want to see again. It made her something inhuman. Less than Human.

I wanted to look away but the Commander’s hand was firm.

Not an enemy. Not a person. Not a woman. Not a girl. A target. A target. A target.

I repeated it over in my head until it was seared in along with the look of her eyes, panicked, warbling, wobbling through the disturbed water.

Her thrashing died with her.

The Commander loosened his grip on my hair, then patted my head gently.

“We don’t need more of this kind. The world will be better after today, you’ll see.” He said, then ruffled my hair and walked away, steps sloshing beyond the light of my torch.

My eyes burned. My breath felt pulled out of me like a long rope unspooled. I slowly wound it back up, gasp by gasp. Around me my unit moved in the darkness from corpse to corpse like the grim reaper’s minions readying his feast, preparing our sacrifices to the long dead gods of the long dead swamp.

I looked to them. My people. My side, waiting to see their reaction to what the Commander did. I waited for their words, their guidance to make everything we had done make sense. To make it feel right. But their dead eyes wouldn’t meet mine, so focused on their dead business as they were.

Something inside me flickered and sputtered, fighting against their silent consent for our sins. But it was weak, I was weak, and I let my weakness snuff it out. I couldn’t hold a light in so much darkness.

Slowly, I reached up and clicked off my chest-torch, joining my unit in the night and sharing in their bloody labour by rote. Like a ghost. A walking corpse. A shadow who could forget itself. A puppet pulled by strings of habit, ready to partake in evil if that’s what I am told to do.

Targets. They’re targets. The training. They are targets that need to be terminated. I have to remember that.

It’s easier to remember in the dark.