Snow was falling gently in the pine forests of southwestern Canada, slowly coating every rock and plant with a fine patina of white. A deer grazed languidly in a clearing, nosing through the shallow drifts of snow, nibbling at the stunted blades of grass. Its head sprang suddenly up, its ears perked. It listened intently. And bolted for the edge of the clearing as gunfire erupted in all directions. It almost made it to the tree line before being cut down in a hail of bullets.
Bark splintered off trees and men screamed in pain and anger as bullets found their mark.
The firestorm of flying lead died down slowly. A grenade exploded somewhere beyond the line of trees, throwing dirt and leaf litter in all directions. After that, there was silence. The snow continued to fall unabated. After several minutes, a man stepped out from behind one of the enormous conifers. A few feet away, another man appeared, and another, and another. They crept into the clearing without a sound, their guns held at the ready.
The man in front paused for a few moments, then straightened, and motioned to the men behind him. “All clear.”
Only then did the rest of his fellows appear, stepping out from behind trees and rocks.
“Looks like we got… twelve of the bastards, plus dinner.” The man said brightly, indicating the deer, which was becoming quickly obscured by snow.
A cry rang out, sharp and startling, from the forest behind them. “Medic! Ruiz is hit.”
The man in the clearing bolted towards the direction the voice had come from. He vaulted over a fallen tree and crashed through a thicket, in his haste to reach the wounded soldier. He dropped to his knees at the injured man’s side.
He took one look at the wound, and knew it didn’t look good. There was blood everywhere, slowly spreading out in a halo of red around the man’s body, turning the snow into dark red slush.
“Doc, how bad is it?” the soldier said thinly, clutching at the gaping wounds in his stomach. The medic didn’t respond, but laid his hand on the soldier’s shoulder, then ripped a medical pack out of a pouch on his waist.
The soldier who’d called for him was kneeling on the other side of the dying man. The medic looked up at him and shook his head, handing him a bundle of gauze. “Press that into the wound, it’ll slow the bleeding.”
The soldier took it, and with shaking fingers, pressed it into the wounds in the man’s stomach, causing him to gasp with pain.
The medic pulled a syringe out of the pouch and injected morphine into the dying man’s neck. After about a minute, the man stopped shivering. The medic felt for his pulse, then sat back, rubbing his face, leaving a smear of blood across his chin.
“You can stop that now,” he said, “he’s dead.”
The soldier pulled his hands away from the dead soldier’s stomach, shifting backwards, to avoid the expanding pool of blood.
The medic’s radio crackled to life, “Sergeant Lee, report.”
The medic reached for the radio on his shoulder, and pressed the transmit button. “Ruiz is dead, Captain.”
“Shit.” The radio crackled for a moment. “What about hostiles?”
“We capped twelve of them, the rest retreated.”
“Good, get back to base.”
“Roger that.” The medic clicked his radio off and stood, grabbing his rifle. “Swanson and Pryce get the body. The rest of you we’re moving out.”
Two soldiers hustled out of a small cluster, and came over, one of them unhooking a folded stretcher from his pack. The positioned Ruiz’s body on it, covered him with an olive green blanket, and lifted the stretcher.
The rest of the soldiers fell into position, two of them shouldering a tree branch with the body of the deer trussed upon it.
Sergeant Jefferson Lee made a move to breathe on his freezing fingers, and remembering that they were covered in Ruiz’s blood, let them drop to his sides, and sighed heavily, following the rest of his soldiers out of the clearing.
It was a three hour walk back to camp, and they were less then halfway there when the sun started to creep down below the line of trees, casting long shadows across their path.
Following the sun, the temperature dropped rapidly and even in their heavy sweaters and coats, the soldiers began shivering. Lee pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket, and ignoring the fact that his hands were still covered in blood, slid them on, and stuffed his freezing hands into his armpits.
“Damn, Jeff, it’s getting really bloody cold out,” Private Pryce said from behind him, still bearing the front of the stretcher.
“Tell me about it. They’d better have coffee or something waiting for us when we get back.” Lee said, slowing so that he could walk beside his friend.
“You know,” Pryce said good-naturedly, “When I joined, they told me I’d be in Hawaii, or Tahiti, not fucking Canada.”
“Yeah, I still can’t believe you actually joined.”
Pryce laughed, a tinny sound in the bitter cold, “You are never gonna let that go, are you? Two years, and you’re still going on about the fact that I volunteered. You sound like my mother.”
“Yeah, well someone has to.”
Another soldier appeared out of the gloom to Lee’s left. “Sergeant, do you think the Alliance is out there? In the forest, watching us?”
It was Private Evans, the man who had helped Lee with Ruiz. He was a nervous man, and was often taken with flights of fancy.
“No, Private, They’re probably just as cold and miserable as we are; I doubt that they would want to start something.”
“But sir, I heard from a guy in the 204th that the Alliance caught them in an ambush, just like this.”
Pryce rolled his eyes and looked past Lee at Evans. “You silly wanker, you’re always yammering about something or another, give it a rest already. And besides, you can’t believe anything anyone from the 204th says, they’re full of shit.”
Lee looked at Pryce, then back at Evans and shrugged, “There you have it.”
Evans looked at him, then at the forest nervously.
“Look, Evans, How bout you help the guys with the deer, I’m sure they’d be glad for the help.”
Evans nodded, and vanished back into the gloom.
Lee looked at Pryce, “Down boy.”
“Look,” Pryce said, “That guy gets on my nerves, and my feet hurt, and Ruiz here isn’t getting any lighter.”
“Well, look at the bright side,” Lee laughed tiredly, moving away from him, heading for the front of the column, “we’re almost there, only another hour or so.”
Pryce groaned.
The falling snow had picked up considerably, and after another two hours, Lee called a halt, and dropped to the snow, pulling out a map from his coat. He sat staring at it for several minutes, and finally stood, kicking snow angrily, glaring up at the falling snow.
“We lost, Serg?” Corporal Westman asked from where he was leaning against the deer several feet away.
Lee looked at him darkly, “No, we aren’t lost; we’re just moving slower then shit in shinola. We’ve only gone seven miles. It’ll be another two hours at least until we’re back.”
All of the soldiers groaned collectively.
“Take another five minutes, and then we’d better get moving again.”
As if to drive the point home, Lee’s radio crackled to life, “Sergeant Lee, please update, we expected you back more than an hour ago.”
“Captain,” Lee said tiredly, clutching the radio with his frozen hands, “This snow is really slowing us down, we’re gonna be out here for awhile.”
“Understood, keep us posted. Find any way to speed up, if you can.” Captain Howell’s voice was filled with static from the cold, and Lee tilted his head towards the radio, to try and hear what he was saying. “Over and out.”
Lee walked over to where Ruiz’s body was resting. He grimaced and motioned to Pryce and Swanson. “Leave the body.”
“Sir?” Swanson asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise. Lee was not one to leave a comrade behind, be he dead or alive.
“Just do it.”
They nodded slowly, and gently pulled Ruiz’s frozen body off the stretcher, taking care to bury him under snow and whatever dirt they could chip off the frozen ground.
Lee let them rest five minutes longer then he said he would, then motioned to them. “Let’s go.”
The soldiers heaved themselves to their feet and resumed their course, knee deep in snow.
Out of the gloom, Lee saw a sign, sticking fifteen feet out of the snow. It read ‘Motel’. Lee whooped in delight and waved to a crouched figure atop the sign. The sniper, seeing Lee through his night vision scope, grinned, and flicked his flashlight off and on several times.
A collective sigh of relief emanated from the men behind Lee. “Thank God. We finally made it. I thought we would die out there.” His voice trailed off, remembering Ruiz.
Lee looked at his watch. It read 12:15. “Jesus,” he said under his breath, “we’ve been out there for nearly ten hours.”
Pryce pushed past him. “Yeah, well I can smell coffee, so move your ass.”
Lee let him by, and after making sure that his men were settled in, headed over to the main building, which had been designated as the command center. Inside, the room had been moved around, so that it centered around a table with a map on it, and a radio. There were several chairs along one wall, and Lee collapsed into one, rubbing his face exhaustedly.
Lieutenant Abney stalked up to him. “There’s no time to relax, Sergeant, you have a report to write.” With that, she spun on her heel and stormed away. He went limp, and groaned, muttering under his breath.
Captain Howell watched her go, from across the room, and then strolled over to Lee’s side. He noticed that Lee was starting to doze off, and nudged his shoulder. “That report can wait till later. Go get some sleep.”
Lee nodded slowly and stood. He saluted, and left the room. It was a short walk outside, and down the sidewalk to one of the rooms. He entered, stripped out of his sodden uniform, and collapsed on the bed.
.
Gender:
Points: 8231
Reviews: 214