James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“Go! Go!” Early urged Jason, as the boy seemed reluctant to move.

“But what about—?” he began, as the squad began moving out.

“Ev’ry body that’s comin’ is here,” Early growled. “Move, boy.”

The spreading arms of mature maples, beeches, and birch trees kept most of the sidewalk in shade, but after a hundred yards there wasn’t a man among them who wasn’t soaked in sweat in the humid heat. The houses to either side were single story red brick block houses with small lawns, maybe a tenth of which were still being maintained to one degree or another. None of the residents poked their heads out as the squad went by, but there were definitely eyes on them.

Ridgedale ended four-tenths of a mile from the service drive in a T-intersection. The experienced fighters increased their intervals as they neared the intersection. So far they hadn’t heard the growl of approaching armor or the freight train roar of 4-blade helicopter rotors, but they knew as soon as that Kestrel had gone down an alarm had gone off in the military’s operations center.

At the T the squad turned right and again spread out on both sides of the street. It ended a hundred yards up. George was in the lead and he slowed to a walk as he moved between the houses on the west side of the small cul-de-sac. Past the back yards he could see the overgrown field he was looking for, but he paused between the brick walls to catch his breath and scan the area with his eyes and ears. The squad spread out around two houses and watched the sky.

Jason knelt between two overgrown yew bushes and tried to fight down his panic. Bobby was dead? It didn’t seem possible. He was a kid, hardly older than Jason himself. It had to be a mistake. But he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen the blood as they’d pulled Bobby from the SUV. It had been everywhere. He’d never seen so much blood. He could still smell it. And once they’d laid him in the street Bobby’d never moved. The explosion of the rocket—had it been a rocket? He didn’t really know—had been louder than anything he could have imagined. He’d felt it in his chest, and his ears were still ringing. Jason found he was gripping the lever action so tightly his fingers began to hurt. He stared down at the rifle. It belonged to his father. His father, who didn’t see a reason for the war, didn’t understand why people felt they had to fight, who’d never taken a stand for or against anything in his life, and who’d never pointed the Marlin at anything other than deer.

“You okay?”

Jason looked up to see Early standing over him, looking concerned at the expression on Jason’s face. Jason glanced from the big rifle in Early’s knuckly hands to the slender lever action in his own, then up at the big man’s face.

“I’m fine.”

Early regarded him with appraising eyes for a few seconds, then nodded. Then the look Jason had given his rifle sunk in.

“Sheeeit,” he cursed quietly. “We shoulda grabbed you Bobby’s rifle. And armor.” He glanced back past the houses the way they had come. “Cain’t go back now. My fault.”

Jason again looked down at the weapon in his hands, then back up at Early. “I’m okay.” Something in his voice made Early give him a second look.

George moved out, still on point. He slipped through a gap in the chain link fence encircling the house’s back yard and moved in quick strides into waist-high grass beyond. The slightly elevated field sat at the edge of the small bedroom community’s indoor/outdoor recreation complex. George avoided crossing the field directly as it would expose them unnecessarily. He reached the weed-choked gravel drive behind the ice arena building and followed it west. The men spread out in a line behind him, mostly hidden from view by the arena building on one side and the raised field with its high grass on the other.

The air was calm and quiet but for the sounds of a few birds as the squad prowled forward at a fast walk. They were trying to be careful and cautious, but at the same time there was still far too little distance between them and the crashed Kestrel. At the far end of the tan brick building the land opened up and George paused. He peered around the bricks to the left and could see a section of the municipal parking lot. Only a few cars were in sight, and while some looked drivable they were all unoccupied civilian vehicles. Even if they held fuel, which was doubtful, there was no time to hotwire one of them, and none of them was large enough to hold the entire squad, which meant they’d have to hotwire two. At least he didn’t see any tanks, or IMPs, or troop trucks disgorging enraged soldiers by the dozen.

The gravel access road continued on, wending its way between the city pool on the left and a baseball diamond on the right. The padlocked pool hadn’t been used in years and was bordered by a ten foot concrete wall. Arborvitae, which were now twenty feet tall, had been planted around the ugly wall in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal it, or present a more attractive alternative. The baseball field was enclosed by a chain link fence and still looked serviceable. To the north, past left field, more small houses could be seen.

The squad jogged from behind the ice arena to behind the pool one at a time, then continued moving west in two lines on either side of the road. Past the pool and the baseball diamond were several acres of woods, which would conceal them from eyes on the ground and in the air.

Ed was still the last in line, guarding their rear, and his head jerked up as he heard it, perhaps echoing off the wall of the ice arena. “Go! Go!” he said sharply, jabbing at the trees. Faces looked back at him, but they started running even before they heard the helicopter.

Ed jogged backwards towards the trees, scanning the sky to the south. He heard the squad crashing into the brush behind him, and hoped the tree cover overhead was thick enough to shield them. The gravel under his boots turned to the muffled thud of composting leaves and he glanced over his shoulder. He was ten feet from the treeline, and most of his men were already invisible inside the patch of woods.

Ed could tell just from the sound that the helicopter was another Kestrel. He moved twenty feet inside the treeline before he knelt beside a tree trunk and looked up. He tried to spot the helicopter through gaps in the trees and finally saw it to the east, coming in low and fast.

The Kestrel was visibly slowing as it went by about half a mile to the east, heading north toward the crash site. Ed lost sight of it as it banked hard. He could hear the sound of its engine and rotors changing as it circled over the downed copter. Whether the helicopter kept airborne watch over its crashed brethren until ground units could arrive or started circling the area looking for them would depend upon a number of variables, the biggest of which were how many helicopters were up and how far away the closest ground units were. Ed preferred to not find out.

“You grab the RPG?” George called to him softly.

Ed shook his head. “Dropped in the ditch.” Even if the fall onto concrete hadn’t damaged the launcher, it would have taken them five minutes to retrieve it. Five minutes he didn’t think they had, and he’d been right. Which was just another piece of bad luck, as RPGs were very, very useful.

The squad leader stood and faced the dense patch of forest. The air was stuffier inside the trees, but slightly cooler out of the sun. He was soaked in sweat, more from the humidity than anything else, but he’d grown accustomed to that—he’d been sweaty since May. The smell of dirt, and bark, and a hundred plants whose names he should know but didn’t filled his nose, replacing the noxious odor of burning rubber. It took him a few seconds to even spot one of his men crouching in the thick undergrowth. It was amazing to him just how much wilderness could be found in the most built-up urban areas. He signaled for them to move out and half the squad appeared around him, rising silently from the long grass and wild shrubs, facing outward in a defensive perimeter. A cloud of mosquitoes decided that moment there was nowhere they’d rather be than inside Ed’s nose, and he huffed in quiet misery as he followed the backs of his men.