James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

When the grenade went off Ed heard shrapnel zinging over his head. It cracked against the bricks behind him. Weasel, up on one knee and firing, flinched and a red line appeared at his temple. Ed dropped the grenade launcher and grabbed his rifle, but before he could bring it to bear on anyone the Growler exploded into the air. None of the soldiers nearby stayed on their feet.

Those soldiers that still could were scrambling for cover, firing wildly in an attempt to keep their attackers’ heads down. The combined roar of over a dozen rifles created a wall of noise Ed could feel in his chest. He had his carbine up and fired at the soldiers trapped in the street, pulling the trigger as fast as he could. He could see their panicked expressions as they realized they’d been caught in an ambush. Receiving fire from two directions they discovered they were exposed to fire no matter which side of the vehicles they cowered behind. A few tried to run from the kill zone, but they were cut down before they could reach the safety of the houses. Bodies covered lawns and sidewalks.

Weasel had reloaded once and was firing short bursts, pivoting back and forth. “Get the driver!” Ed yelled at Weasel, pointing at the IMP. Weasel leapt off the porch and fired a wild burst as he ran into the street toward the open rear door of the IMP. Ricochets whined off its armor, but the IMP wasn’t accelerating away. It was still coasting leisurely down the street, now angling slightly toward the far curb and the burned out and rusting vehicle. Ed fired at the writhing bodies in the street between the vehicles to cover Weasel during his charge. The red circle/dot reticle of his carbine’s optical sight bounced up and down every time his gun fired, but the noise was distant, deadened by the adrenaline in his bloodstream.

Jason jumped at the sniper’s shot and then Early was spinning around, graceful as a dancer, brining his big rifle to bear on something in the street as an explosion shook the house. Jason stood frozen, his mind blank, the rifle in his own hands forgotten. Early fired, adjusted his aim, fired again, and a second explosion shook the house.

“Shoot boy, shoot!” Early yelled from behind his rifle. Jason stared at him uncomprehendingly, the wall of noise from the shooting and the explosions freezing his brain, then the big man fired again. The National Match bucked in Early’s brown hands and the smoking, spent case struck Jason square in the face. The pain brought him out of his reverie and he turned toward the window.

The scene before him was a madhouse. Bodies littered the street, some thrashing, and their screams above the deafening gunfire were horrible. A huge army vehicle was almost directly in front of their house, its open rear door hazy from smoke. The four-by-four behind it was a crumpled, smoking hulk and as Jason stared he saw its back end erupt in yellow flame.

There was blood on the pavement, and severed limbs. Camouflage clad figures were running in all directions and he could hear bullets whizzing through the air nearby. Gunfire echoed off the housefronts and the noise was incredible. He was hit in the side of the head by another smoking case as Early fired again.

Jason shouldered his rifle and fired without aiming at the armored personnel carrier still rolling down the street. He heard the clang and whine of the bullet ricocheting away. The sound of his rifle discharging hardly bothered him; it was like a muffled thump, a handclap buried by pillows.

He worked the lever automatically, still transfixed by the carnage in the street. Suddenly he saw there was a soldier atop the APC just yards from him and coming closer. This time he pointed the rifle more or less in the right direction before yanking the trigger.

His second shot went wide but then he saw the soldier was already dead, slumped over behind the roof gun. Jason worked the lever of his rifle again as a soldier appeared off the nose of the IMP. He was on the far side of the street, running flat out.

Hey! One’s getting away! Jason shouted inside his head, but nothing escaped his lips. The shooting seemed to be dying down. Didn’t anybody else see him? This time Jason put his cheek to the rifle stock. The soldier looked huge against the rifle’s front sight, impossible to miss, but Jason jerked the trigger and he could see his front sight pull off the running soldier.

He worked the lever again, cursing, and concentrated. The soldier was further away now, almost out of sight, angling for a gap between two houses. Jason held his breath, took up the slack in the trigger, and put the rifle’s square front post on the soldier’s lead shoulder. The rifle bucked in his hands as the trigger broke clean, and when it came down the soldier was nowhere to be found. Then Jason saw him, lying sideways in the grass, feet kicking awkwardly. The bullet had gone in just under the man’s armpit.

Jason saw another soldier on hands and knees scrambling backward beside the creeping IMP. One handed, the soldier raised his rifle and fired a shot past the vehicle’s rear hatch. Jason saw Ed across the street running for the IMP, and knew the squad leader couldn’t see the soldier. Jason brought his rifle back up, working the lever, and sighted in. The shot took the soldier behind the neck and he dropped without a twitch. Jason blinked twice, then looked left. Early wasn’t there.

Panicked, Jason looked left and right, and there was Early at the ragged hole where the wall had caved in. Early had turned back just as Jason took the shot and had been in line to see the soldier crumple.

“No time for gawkin’!” the big man yelled at him. “C’mon!” Early charged back across the house. Jason was right on his heels out the door.

Ed was five steps behind Weasel when he dived into the rolling APC. Before Ed could do the same the IMP thudded into the burned-out car hulk and began pushing it across the concrete. The screech of metal lasted just a few seconds before the wreck slammed into the curb and stopped the IMP’s forward momentum. Ed heard cursing from inside as Weasel tripped. There was a shredded body on the floor in back and the non-slip floor was awash in blood. Ed jumped over the body and almost fell.

The IMP’s driver was dead, that much was obvious from the low-speed collision. Ed left Weasel to check out the interior of the vehicle and turned to survey the street from the darkened interior. Every soldier he could see was down, although many of them were thrashing or screaming in pain. Or both. The Growler was farther away than he’d expected. The explosion had flattened all four of its tires and eliminated whatever forward momentum it’d had. The back of the four-by-four was engulfed in flames and sitting in a burning puddle of diesel fuel. That meant the fuel tank was perforated and not likely to explode, just burn. George was on the far side of it, moving in slowly, carbine sweeping back and forth. He fired at one thrashing body, which stilled, paused briefly to check another, probing with the muzzle of his weapon, then another. The heat from the flames kept him away from the Growler and two more still forms, but their indifference to the terrific heat told him all he needed to know.

“Are they all down?” Ed yelled at George.

George, still checking bodies, looked up and down the street. “I don’t know.”

Early and the kid emerged from a ramshackle house and scanned the street. Jason looked a little stunned but Ed didn’t fail to notice him clumsily reloading his little lever-action. “Watch the street!” Early told the young man.

“You gotta come see this,” Ed heard Weasel say from the front of the IMP.

“In a minute,” he snapped over his shoulder. The air smelled of blood and burning fuel and gunfire. “Anybody hurt?” he called out. “Anybody? Where’s Mark? Q?” Ed jumped down from the APC.