Ah, the chaos of war. What can one do? This story might be kind of difficult to read, so feel free to ask the "What on earth is going on here?" questions if you feel totally confused.
I hope you enjoy it, if you get around to reading it! Just a forewarning, it might be PG-13, since it is...you know...a war. They...like...kill each other...and stuff...
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This invasion has gone on far too long. If this keeps up, we’ll all end up like Sairun. His mind has absolutely gone.
“Paul N.!”
“Here!”
“Katherine K.!”
“Here!”
“Syle G.!”
A slight pause. Commander looks over the line of her soldiers.
“Syle G.!”
“here,” a hushed voice responds.
Syle. That’s Sairun’s English name. I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s an actual name, since I have yet to see it here. It more seems like he took the name of Kyle and threw in the first letter of his fox name to make it unique. Well, perhaps they have it in England, since we aren’t there yet. All the humans here speak English with a strange sort of accent.
“Vincent C.!”
“Here!”
That’s my name: Vincent Cooler. I picked it because it’s close to my fox name: Vynecir Cuolei.
“Today’s schedule: patrols, Katherine, Shane, Joseph, route 9C…”
Our wolf commander, Kraegan, goes by the name Sarah. I don’t mind what she tells me to do, as long as I’m not stuck with Sairun.
“Bartholomew, Peter, Rick, patrol route 9A…”
Anything but post with Sairun, please don’t put me with Sairun. I tighten my grip on my rifle.
“Lyle, Vincent, post 9E…”
I release. Looks like it’s going to be a long, miserable day looking over the city, then.
I mean, I understand where Sairun is coming from. He had to watch his patrol get ripped to shreds by a pair of dogs, and then had to write a report detailing the incident. I can’t imagine what it must be like watching your allies get torn apart by animals. It’s one thing to be shot to death, but that’s something else.
But still, we’ve all seen terrible things in this war. I was firing a machinegun once, and I ran out of ammo. I told the fox next to me to get me some more ammo. She did, but when she came back carrying the ammo, a cannonball came in and blew her head clean off. I’ve always wondered if it would have been any different had I went and got the ammo myself.
And another time, we were fighting through a house, and as I rounded a corner, an enemy shot my rifle right out of my hands. As he fumbled to try to reload, I leapt at him and had to tear his throat out. I still remember how his blood tasted, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that.
War isn’t easy for anyone, but what makes Sairun’s experience different from any of mine?
He doesn’t sleep anymore. At least, none of us ever see him sleeping. He’s stands and watches for the entire night, panicking at any light or sound that appears suddenly. Kraegan thinks he’ll get over it eventually, but I’m doubtful. Once a soldier’s mind goes, it’s gone, and there’s not really anything you can do about it.
“…Finished. Go to your stations.”
Maybe I’ll have time to find out.
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It’s not a bad view from up here. You can see the open sky, the clouds, and feel the wind breeze through your whiskers. It beats the musky air in our underground cities. I bet if we built our cities aboveground like humans did then we would all be much healthier. Only Sairun could make this feel like torture.
We’re on post duty, so we’re up high on a rooftop watching the city go by. Normally, post duty is the best possible station, given to soldiers who deserve a little reward. It’s a nice break from patrols on the streets, never knowing who might pull a knife or pistol out. But Sairun’s jumping at every sound, and now this just feels like torment.
“Sairun, relax, will you?” he turns to me with wide eyes, as if I might devour him at any given moment. But then he lowers his ears and feels sort of ashamed.
“I’m sorry, I’m just nervous, that’s it.”
“What do you have to be nervous about?” I try to stand intimidatingly, but it’s hard to do while keeping balanced on two feet. I would think that after a year of wearing these hind-paw attachments I would become used to them, but I still prefer being down lower to the ground.
“Nothing. There’s nothing,” he looks back out at the city, but jumps when he hears a horse’s whinny.
“Sairun,” he shivers and looks back to me the same way as before: first surprised, then ashamed.
“I’m sorry.”
“What happened that day?”
He quickly turns as he hears the crack of a whip in the streets below. Then he slowly turns back to me, surprised that I have been watching him all this time.
“It happened like the report said, we were out on patrol…”
Syle, Arthur, and Nathan walked their assigned patrol route, keeping alert of the world around them. It was difficult for them to see much, since they were all shorter than the people around them by nearly a foot, even while standing on two feet. However, with their menacing rifles displaying the crowd made a small circle of open space around them. They didn’t really know why they were on patrol, but they knew they were ordered to patrol, and that was meaning enough for them
Syle, being the talkative once, tried to strike up conversation with his two more stoic patrol partners. In English of course, since we were told to use English while in public. Neither Nathan nor Arthur spoke English well, so the conversation deteriorated until they all quietly kept walking and watching.
“As soon as we walked into the path of that alley…they attacked.”
Syle looked around and admired the bustle of the city. There were so many different kinds of people here, not at all like back on the plantation. This was why he joined the army: to get out into the real world, to not be stuck studying supply-demand charts and keeping up with all the latest farming technology. All that seemed so far behind him now.
Suddenly, as they entered the opening of the alleyway, Nathan was torn to the ground. On top of him a large dog snapped at his neck, and by the time Syle raised his rifle, the blood coming from his neck showed that he was already too late. The dog had long since torn out his neck, but didn’t stop there. It then ripped at his muzzle, leaving it half-torn off. He fired once, twice, three times, ultimately sending the dog lying beside his fallen ally.
He turned around, just as Arthur desperately tried to protect himself. The other dog’s jaws closed in over the fox, and not even the bullets from his rifle could stop the assault. It didn’t even stop when Arthur was dead. Apparently an enemy being dead isn’t really enough for dogs. Syle fired seven more shots before the struggle was over.
He hastily reloaded, trying to remain constantly alert of the menacing stares from the people all around who looked in such pleasure at the carnage before them. He then slowly moved through them, with his rifle his only defense against the sickening smiles.
“I lied about what happened after that.”
I look at Sairun, and see that he’s nervous. But, he didn’t even try to talk about watching his allies get ripped to shreds. We all believed that he was emotionally scarred because of that, but he never even mentioned it. He only said that they attacked. He’s leaving out a crucial part of this. What else happened to him?
“After I shot up the two dogs, I looked down the alleyway, and I saw who unleashed them on us.”
He hastily reloaded, and tilted his rifle upwards, causing the nearby crowd that had gathered to evaluate the peculiar happening to scatter. He first checked the nearby windows, since most patrols that get silenced are attacked from the upper levels. Then, he looked down the alleyway.
“They were two kids, Vynecuo. I chased after them, but once got away. By the time I caught up to the other one he was in the middle of the neighboring street.”
Instinctively, Syle attached his rifle to his back and dropped down to four paws. His hind-paw pads would slow him down a bit, since they were still attached, but he would never be able to catch them traveling on two feet. As soon as he dropped, the two children darted down the alley. They split once they reached a fork, and Syle chased one of them, after he realized that he could never get them both.
He was far faster on four legs than the human child was on two, so it only took a short amount of time Syle to catch him. He leapt onto his back and tore him to the ground. Then, he stood back up, readied his rifle, and pointed it down at the sprawling figure.
“And…I shot him. I used an entire clip on him.”
The boy looked up in terror, trying to crawl backwards. Syle fired once, then twice, then three times, between each successive shot there were smaller and smaller intervals of time in between. He was so focused on firing that he failed to notice the people around him crying out at each and every gunshot. With each pull of the trigger, the boy squirmed less and less. By the fifteenth round, he stopped moving entirely.
As he watched the blood flow and pollute the road around the body, Syle reloaded another clip. Then, he looked up, pointing his gun, turning to any sound he felt might threaten his existence. He stood alone in the center of the road. The horse-drawn carriages had stopped, and people stood at the windows, looking down at the lone fox standing in the middle of the human street. The crowd of people pressed inward, waiting to engulf him. Only his rifle kept the tide at bay, as he slowly stepped through the water and reported back to the commander.
“And you know what they did to me, Vynecuo? You know what they did?”
That’s strange. Sairun didn’t come back with any scars. I can’t imagine how they would have tortured him without leaving even a scratch.
“You know what they did?”
“What.”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing. T-They did nothing, Vynecuo. They stared for a moment, a-a-and then they moved on. They didn’t try to stop me or grab me or hit me or anything! They did nothing! Nothing! Nothing, Vynecuo! Nothing!”
“I-I-I just kind of stood there, a-a-and I didn’t really know what to do. Who could I apologize to? No one cared! Life just kind of went on, l-l-like this was just some kind of casual occurrence that happened everyday. Like, like, like eating or drinking or sleeping. They did nothing, t-t-they just walked and moved about and went on with their lives.
“A-a-and then I realized that my allies were still lying on the ground in the other street, a-a-and I went back to try to find them, a-a-and when I got there, they were gone! Gone! A-a-and I ran back, to try to find the kid in the middle of the street, and he was gone! A-a-and then I rand back to find the dogs that attacked us, and they were gone! They were all gone, Vynecuo! Gone! Not dead, gone!
“That’s what happens here, Vynecuo! No one ever dies, they just become gone! I want to go home! I want to get off this island, and go back to the farm, and pretend like none of this ever happened! Because pretty soon everyone on this island will all be gone! And pretty soon, this whole island will be gone!”
Sairun’s lying down, paws over his head, pulling down his ears, shaking. Then, he calms down.
“But then I realized that, pretty soon, home will be gone, too. So then I thought that maybe there is somewhere else I can go. But then I realized that, pretty soon, this whole world will be gone, too.”
Sairun sits up, perking up his ears.
“Then, I thought maybe there is somewhere in the universe I can go. But, pretty soon, this whole universe will be gone, too. So then I thought, maybe there is somewhere in the everything I can go. But, pretty soon, the everything will be gone, too.”
Sairun looks at me steadily while a gunshot rings out in the backdrop of the city.
“What am I supposed to do?”
-END
Question of the day: "What is 'gone'?"
