James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

Quentin appeared just then from between two houses. “We’ve got at least one on foot!” he yelled, pointing back in the direction he’d come.

“Fuck. Jason! Get over here in front of the IMP and keep an eye out. You see anybody you yell out.” Ed pointed where he wanted the young man. “You hurt?” he asked Quentin. The black man shook his head.

“Coming out!” Mark jogged into view through the tall grass and stopped on the sidewalk, breath coming in ragged gasps. He bent nearly double, letting the SAW hang from its sling around his shoulders. “Too old for this shit,” the big forty-eight-year-old panted. “At least one, maybe two, zig-zagging through the yards, tearing ass outta here.” He waved a hand in the general direction. “Think I tagged one, but I couldn’t catch them. Fuckin’ teenagers.” He hawked a big wad of phlegm onto the cracked pavement.

“You hurt? No? Nobody? Unbefuckinglievable.” Ed was still jacked up on adrenaline, his whole body vibrating. He put a fresh magazine into his weapon, his last, and looked at the mag he’d just taken out. He could see four, maybe five rounds left in it.

“We’ve still got a fucking sniper out here,” George warned everybody. “Guy could be a friendly, or he could be a fucking wingnut and start taking potshots at us, so don’t bunch up.” That got their heads swiveling.

“You guys have two minutes!” Ed yelled at them. “Grab all the shit you can carry. Ammo, water, anything that looks like intelligence. And somebody get me a body count!”

Ed clambered back into the IMP and shuffled toward the front, banging elbows and head on unforgiving steel. As big as it was on the outside, the armored personnel carrier was less than roomy. The firing platform for the roof gun took up a big chunk of the center of the compartment. The dead gunner’s body was visible from the chest down as he hung by his armpits from the hatch.

The IMP’s driver was slumped in his chair, one shoulder covered in blood from a head wound. Light came in through what passed for a windshield in the armored personnel carrier, a curving, four foot wide, four inch tall slit. The clear polymer in it was designed to stop most small arms fire and was divided into sections, or blocks, that could be replaced individually.

“What?” he demanded. Weasel, furiously opening the vehicle’s storage compartments, pointed at the block directly in front of the driver’s head. There, in the middle of it, like a mosquito trapped in amber, was a bullet. A big bullet with a silver tip.

“Our sniper?” Ed asked. Weasel shrugged. Ed looked from the bullet to the driver and back to the bullet. “So what killed him?”

“He took something in the side of the head. Shrapnel from a grenade or a stray round maybe. Back hatch was open and even though he’s got armor behind him shit just bounces around in here once it gets in.”

Ed stepped back to the roof gunner and examined him. The sniper’s first shot had hit the man in the base of the throat and blown his spine out the back of his neck. It was grisly. Ed forced his eyes off the man, glanced around the IMP’s mostly metal interior and grunted. “Two minutes,” he told Weasel. Then he looked down at the ammo cans Weasel had found. “Those full of anything we can use?” he asked, hardly daring to hope.

“Bet your ass.” Weasel hissed loudly, and flipped open the lid of one. There, each nestled in its own slot, were eight fragmentation hand grenades.

“Beautiful. See what else they have.” Ed scurried out the back of the carrier. He climbed up the side of the IMP, using the slat armor like a ladder, to the roof.

“You see anything?” he called down to Jason, who was standing at the rear corner of the rusted vehicle wedged between the IMP and the curb. Jason looked up at him and shook his head.

The squad was moving with directed intensity, systematically looting the bodies of anything of value. George saw Mark digging through one of the soldier’s packs he’d found blown from the roof of the Growler, pulling out items one at a time, and yelled at him.

“No no no, fuck that, we don’t have time,” George told him. He jogged over, and reached up to where his knife should be hanging from his webbing. It wasn’t there. Instead he pointed at the big blade on Mark’s hip. “Use your knife. Cut the whole thing open.” He looked up and around. “Move, people!” he yelled. “We’re living on borrowed time.” Then he jogged back between the houses to retrieve his knife.

A long time ago—it seemed like decades—when he’d first joined up, someone had shown Ed how to operate a belt-fed grenade launcher, but he hadn’t laid hands on one since and couldn’t figure out how to get the belt out of the weapon. He used his knife to pry apart the metal links and laid the rest of the ammo belt back into the oversize ammo can resting on a raised tray beside the gun. He closed it up and moved to the rear of the vehicle.

“Hey.” Weasel looked up, and Ed dropped the heavy can into his arms before climbing down.

“There’s a big water tank on the wall in here.”

“Can we grab it?”

Weasel shook his head. “Bolted in.”

“Fuck.” He thought for just a second. “You done in here?”

“Yeah.” Weasel glanced down and Ed saw the grenade box, three ammo cans, and a battered M4 carbine that probably belonged to the driver all lying on the back hatch. Weasel’s chest rig was stuffed with the extra magazines that went with the rifle. Ed dug out his empty canteen and tossed it to Weasel.

“Form up on the IMP for water and grenades!” he called out to his men. He could see they were almost finished, and he checked his watch. Three minutes already. They needed to move. Weasel tossed the canteen back to him, full.

George staggered up with an extra carbine over one shoulder, his pack stuffed with salvaged gear. Ed was happy to see two grenades hanging from his chest straps. George was too overloaded to reach his canteens himself. Weasel yanked them out roughly and began filling them.

“Some of these guys were carrying M4s, so we can finally grab some ammo.”

“You find any intelligence?” Ed asked George. The taciturn man shook his head.

“Whatever they had was probably on the officer, who was in the back of the Growler.” They both looked at the vehicle, which was still burning fiercely. The two bodies in the back seat were black shapes huddled low in the seats. The pungent odor of burning flesh and rubber filled the street. It was a smell they’d become all too familiar with.

George looked down at the big can of belted grenades on the ramp of the IMP. “What’s that?” Ed told him about grabbing the can off the roof. “No, no, leave it, you can’t use those in your grenade launcher.”

“They’re the exact same!” Ed protested.

“No, they’re hotrodded, like magnums. They’d blow your thumper apart if you could get them to chamber, but you can’t, they’re a few millimeters longer. Leave ‘em.”

“Shit.”

Mark jogged up and hefted his SAW in Ed’s direction. “I’ve only got about five rounds left.” The end of the ammo belt barely extended out of the receiver. He had a salvaged carbine slung over one shoulder but it couldn’t put out anywhere close to the amount of fire that the SAW could.

Ed nodded. “Don’t worry about it now. Right now we’ve got to get the fuck out of here.” He jogged around the side of the personnel carrier to Jason.

“Haven’t seen anything,” the young man said before Ed could speak. Ed stared down the street. Blank faces of crumbling houses lined the street, stretching away from the men for half a mile. In the distance the concrete was a shimmering puddle in the heat, the rising mirage making the far houses dance and sway. Ed could see a hundred windows and only a handful of them still held glass. Most of the doorways were gaping, splintered ruins. Every yard was overgrown with waist high grass and weeds and the occasional patch of flowers.