James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

There was no movement in the flipped Growler and as the soldier walked toward it he grabbed at a fresh magazine for his rifle.

“Don’t get too close, jackass,” one of his companions told him.

The soldier, after fumbling about a bit, got the fresh magazine into the magazine well of his rifle, and looked over his shoulder at the other two men. “Fuck off, Willie. You haven’t seen shit, you just got to this damn city.”

He hit the release and the bolt slammed forward with a manly authoritative thunk . The soldier turned back to the flipped vehicle with the intention of putting another magazine into it, then he all at once screamed, dropped his rifle, and fell to the ground, clutching at his ankle, which was now a mass of bone splinters and blood. The other two soldiers hadn’t heard anything and they looked at each other and back at the screaming third of their group in confusion. That gave Renny enough time to line up his sights through the fractured rear side window at another of the soldiers. He fired his Glock three times. The broken glass of the window door deflected his first bullet but the other two found their mark. The soldier fell to the ground dead. The third man fired a wild burst at the overturned Growler as he dove behind his own vehicle.

The Growler which had been paralleling Weasel on the far side of the freeway finally raced up, having discovered the first overpass where they’d tried to cross blocked by wrecked vehicles. It stopped fifty feet on the opposite side of the overturned vehicle.

As the second Growler was pulling up Weasel was finally able to extricate himself from the steering wheel. After three savage kicks he managed to force open his door far enough to wriggle his way out on his back. Bleeding from cuts on his face and hands, and confident he had several broken ribs and maybe a fractured bone in his left arm, Weasel extended the stock of his MP5 with a yank as he got to his feet.

His thumb flipped down the selector level lever as his sights cleared the top of the overturned vehicle. The Growler which had just arrived, he was glad to see, was not armored, and he emptied his entire magazine into the windshield, working it from one side to the other. Then he ducked down as the remaining man of the trio which had flipped his vehicle popped up to fire at him.

As he deftly reloaded his MP5 Weasel said to Renny, “Can you get out of there?”

“I’m trying,” the old man said, but he was wedged between the seat and the door by his rifle. Weasel didn’t have time to look in the back seat to check the status of Sarah or Quentin, but neither of them was making any noise.

Fresh mag in his subgun Weasel crabwalked four feet to the side before popping up again and firing a long burst before even looking to see where the Tabs might be. His first long burst had killed the driver, so the vehicle hadn’t moved. One of the other soldiers was trying to wrestle his companion from behind the wheel. Weasel swung his submachine gun over and emptied the remainder of the magazine into the man through the door. The armor-piercing ammo did its job and the young soldier fell to the ground, screaming.

Weasel ducked back down, reloading once again. “Weaver!” he shouted. “Sergeant Sarah Weaver, what the fuck are you doing?” His shouting was rewarded with a low groan. Bullets spanged off the Growler above his head as at least two of the soldiers fired at him.

Still crouched down behind his overturned vehicle he fired blindly over the top at the two other Growlers, short bursts to keep their heads down. Then he heard a loud thud seemingly inches from his head. He straightened up enough to see over the top of the Growler and there, sitting on the vehicle’s frame inches from his face, was a grenade. Without thinking he reflexively grabbed it and threw it at the Growler which had flipped them over.

It seemed he’d barely ducked back behind his cover before the grenade exploded. Weasel instinctively charged toward that Growler, knowing that by using his overturned vehicle for cover he was just drawing more incoming fire toward the wounded people inside it. The Tabs behind him fired at his fleeing form, and he heard the bullets whipping past his head but he didn’t slow down. He didn’t see the soldier on the far side of the Growler he was running toward, so he hoped that it was mutual and the soldier hadn’t seen him leave his cover either.

Weasel ran around the back of the vehicle, using it to shield himself from the other soldiers and came around the back of it with his MP5 up. The soldier was just turning toward him, having heard something. Weasel fired a burst into the man’s groin and as he collapsed to the ground screaming he finished him off with a two-round burst to the face.

He now had some distance from the other combatants, and better cover, as this Growler, sitting on its wheels, stood higher off the ground. At that thought his eyes opened wide and a half second later he had dropped to his stomach on the pavement behind the boxy vehicle. Growlers were designed to go anywhere. That meant not only were they four-wheel drive, but they had excellent ground clearance.

Weasel could see underneath his vehicle, across sixty feet of cracked asphalt, and underneath the other vehicle where he saw the two soldiers’ boots. The MP5’s magazine was too long to use from a traditional prone position, as Weasel had learned long ago while trying to hide behind a curb from incoming fire. He rolled over onto his side, pulled the MP5 tight against his shoulder, laid the front sight on the leftmost leg that he saw, and pulled the trigger. The remaining twenty-four rounds in the magazine sprayed out of the gun on full auto and he used the recoil to work the muzzle across the underside of the far Growler.

The two soldiers fell to the ground screaming but Weasel found himself with an empty submachine gun and in an awkward position from which to try and reload it. He rolled to one side, grabbed his M&P out of its holster, punched out in a two-handed grip underneath the Growler, and started pulling the trigger as fast as he could at the two thrashing men. By the time the slide locked back on an empty magazine the men had stopped moving.

Weasel reloaded both his weapons behind cover then advanced to the far vehicle in a dash. As he suspected both the soldiers there were dead. By the time he got back to his vehicle Renny had managed to untangle himself from his big rifle and crawled out Weasel’s door. He pulled his rifle out after him while Weasel wrestled with the rear door of the vehicle, finally scraping it open against the pavement.

Sergeant Sarah Weaver was alive, but he still got a fright because she was covered in blood. A quick check showed him that it wasn’t her blood. Quentin, the man with whom Weasel had shared maybe a thousand days under fire, was dead, his skin nearly gray from blood loss. “Dammit, Q,” Weasel swore. Biting back the sadness and anger he checked what pockets he could reach for personal items.

Sarah had taken a bad hit to her head and was disoriented. It took Weasel a good minute to get her out of the back seat while Renny covered them with his rifle. Weasel half-carried the muscular woman to the late-arriving Growler. He wrestled her into the back seat, then pulled the driver he’d killed out from behind the wheel.

The windshield in front of him was mostly shot out but the vehicle was otherwise undamaged. Weasel took a sharp U-turn and headed north on the service drive, then cut west across the first open overpass, more intent than ever to get the hell away from the area. A corner of his mind had registered Quentin’s death, but he didn’t have time to grieve for the man now, that would have to come later.

“There’s another Growler back there,” Renny said, looking out the back window.